Alphabet Inc.’s Google avoided a forced breakup of a key part of its advertising technology business Wednesday after a federal judge rejected the U.S. Justice Department’s request that the company sell its online advertising exchange, opting instead for measures designed to make Google’s technology work more readily with competing services.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, declined to order Google to divest its AdX exchange, according to reporting by Bloomberg. The decision represents a significant victory for Google after Brinkema previously found that the company had unlawfully monopolized portions of the technology infrastructure used by publishers to sell advertising on the open web.
According to Bloomberg, “Google Avoids Ad Exchange Sale as Judge Orders Tech Integration,” Brinkema issued the decision under seal alongside a brief order rejecting the Justice Department’s proposed sale of AdX. A redacted version of the full ruling is expected to be released later.
Rather than impose the structural remedy sought by antitrust officials, Brinkema accepted most of the proposed behavioral remedies, Reuters reported. Those measures are intended to address the connections between Google’s advertising products and rival technology without transferring ownership of the exchange to another company.
The outcome follows Brinkema’s April 2025 ruling that Google maintained illegal monopolies in markets involving publisher ad servers and advertising exchanges. The Justice Department and a coalition of states had sued Google in 2023, accusing the company of using its position across different parts of the digital advertising system to restrict competition.
At the center of the dispute is AdX, an exchange that conducts rapid auctions for advertising space as webpages load. Publishers using the exchange pay Google a 20% fee, according to the New York Times. Although the operation represents a relatively small portion of Google’s overall business, the government argued that Google’s ownership of both AdX and other publisher-facing technology allowed it to reinforce its position across the advertising market.
The Justice Department had argued during the remedies proceedings that behavioral restrictions would not go far enough because Google could not be trusted to operate AdX neutrally after the conduct identified by the court. Google countered that separating the exchange from its infrastructure would be technically complicated, potentially take years and risk disruption for customers, according to Reuters.
Read more: EU Examines Google’s AI Search Opt-Out for Publishers
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Google had proposed a less disruptive approach. In a May 2025 statement outlining its preferred remedies, the company said it was prepared to give rival publisher ad servers access to real-time bids from AdX, eliminate certain pricing restrictions and commit not to revive auction practices that had already been discontinued. Google maintained that those changes would address the court’s findings while preserving an integrated advertising system used by publishers.
The Justice Department took a different view. Its original antitrust complaint alleged that Google had deliberately restricted real-time integration between AdX and competing publisher ad servers, helping protect the company’s position on multiple sides of the advertising technology market.
Wednesday’s ruling also adds to a string of setbacks for U.S. antitrust authorities seeking structural remedies against the largest technology companies. Reuters reported that it was the third consecutive instance in which a court rejected an attempt by federal regulators to force a major technology company to sell assets.
Google previously avoided another major divestiture when a federal judge declined to order the sale of its Chrome browser after finding that the company illegally maintained a monopoly in online search. Meta Platforms Inc. likewise defeated the Federal Trade Commission’s effort to unwind its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, Reuters reported.
Those decisions have raised broader questions about how far courts are willing to go when fashioning remedies in technology antitrust cases, particularly when years can pass between the conduct challenged by regulators and a final decision.
For Google, Wednesday’s ruling removes one of the most consequential immediate risks arising from the ad-tech litigation: the prospect of surrendering ownership of AdX. The company still faces restrictions on how its advertising products operate and interact with competitors, and it has said previously that it disagrees with the underlying finding against its publisher advertising business and intends to appeal.
The ruling does not erase the court’s earlier conclusion that Google violated antitrust law. Instead, it shifts the next phase of the case toward determining whether interoperability and other restrictions can restore competition without dismantling part of the company’s advertising infrastructure.
Source: Bloomberg
Source: The New York Times
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