A federal court has rejected the U.S. Justice Department’s request to force a breakup of Google LLC’s advertising business, declining to order the sale of a key auction service in the long-running antitrust case. The ruling, issued today by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, follows a lawsuit filed in January 2023 by the Justice Department and several state attorneys general. The case centered on Google’s display advertising unit, which helps brands buy ad space on third-party websites, with prosecutors alleging the company used anticompetitive tactics to lock in its dominance. Last April, Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled in favor of the government, finding that the unit maintains an illegal monopoly. However, in today’s decision, Brinkema stopped short of mandating divestiture, instead accepting a set of modified behavioral remedies.
The Justice Department had specifically sought the sale of AdX, a display advertising service that operated as an online auction where brands bid for ad space on publishers’ websites. AdX was the core focus of the antitrust complaint, alongside a second defunct service called DFP, through which website operators historically listed their ad space for sale. The court previously found that Google limited competitors’ access to DFP, even though the platform nominally allowed publishers to send inventory to AdX rivals. Two AdX features drew particular scrutiny: First Look, which gave Google a first right of refusal on publishers’ ad space, and Last Look, which tracked the value of competitors’ bids and allowed the company to outbid them using that data.
Today’s ruling does not require Google to sell AdX, but it will still impose changes on the company’s business practices. Judge Brinkema wrote in her order that most of the parties’ proposed behavioral remedies, as modified by the court, were accepted. The specific terms of those remedies remain unclear, as the full ruling is not scheduled for publication for another two weeks.
Last year, Google offered a set of voluntary remedies, including a commitment to stop using First Look and Last Look, both of which the lawsuit identified as anticompetitive. The company had already phased out those features several years ago, replacing them with a capability called Unified Pricing Rules. The Justice Department, for its part, pushed for Google to open-source certain components of DFP, the service that publishers formerly used to route ad space to AdX.
Neither DFP nor AdX is available as a standalone product today, as Google merged their capabilities into a platform called Google Ad Manager several years ago. As a result, the remedies previewed in today’s order will likely focus on that integrated service, meaning the practical impact on Google’s U.S. advertising operations will be shaped by the forthcoming detailed ruling.
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