Brinkema keeps AdX inside Alphabet after ruling Google an illegal monopolist
The court rejected all three structural remedies the Justice Department asked for and accepted most of the behavioral ones. The opinion saying which ones is sealed, so nobody yet knows what Google must actually do.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
What happened
- The full opinion explaining the decision has been temporarily sealed so the parties can redact material they consider confidential.
- The parties must meet and confer and file a single jointly proposed Final Judgment within 30 days, including rival versions labelled by proponent wherever a provision remains unresolved.
- Shares in The Trade Desk, AppLovin, Magnite and Taboola rose in Wednesday morning trading after the ruling, and Alphabet was up slightly.
Why it matters
- What it limits constraint Any media buying or publishing plan built on a separately owned AdX has to be rebuilt around a compliance regime whose terms cannot currently be read, which pushes the rebuild past this quarter for anyone who needs certainty before committing spend.
- Who has to decide decision The next month converts advocacy into drafting, because duration, trustee powers and the definition of a violation get fixed in judgment language, and an obligation that does not survive into that text is enforceable against nobody.
- Who's exposed exposure Enforcement moves out to the market: publishers and rival ad servers become the parties who have to spot latency, signal or pricing manipulation from outside Google's stack and raise it.
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The choice between structural and behavioral relief is a choice about who pays to notice a violation. A divestiture is expensive once and then enforces itself, because a separately owned exchange has no reason to favour a rival's ad server. Conduct rules are cheap to enter and costly forever, and the cost falls on whoever must detect a breach, which on the open web means publishers and their vendors inferring latency, signal handling and pricing behaviour from outside the system that produces it. Because the court accepted most of the proposed behavioral remedies only "as modified" and did not enumerate them [5][4], the firms that will do that detecting cannot yet read which obligations they are meant to police. The board-deck line is that Google kept a small asset and the ad tech complex breathed out. Sizing supports the word small. Wedbush, working from court documents, put Google Ad Manager at 4.1% of Google's overall revenue and 1.5% of its operating profit in 2020, and noted that more recent figures were redacted [6]. Ad Manager's share of profit was therefore about 37% of its share of revenue, meaning it earned at roughly a third of the company-average margin [29], set against around $294bn of Google advertising revenue last year [23]. What the board-deck line omits is that the liability case was never about that profit pool: Brinkema's April 2025 findings turned on wilful conduct in the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets [12], where she recorded a durable ad server share above 90% [13]. The unresolved question is whether rules can untie what common ownership keeps tied. The operative document does not exist yet, which makes the drafting window the substantive part of this story. The joint filing falls on or about 2 October by the calendar [27], and the order fixes no implementation date, names no trustee and sets no duration [8]. On duration the two sides arrived seven years apart: Google offered three years of supervision, with later openness to longer, while the government sought ten years of restrictions and a named catalogue of re-monopolisation routes to be policed [11][22][31]. There is also a feasibility record the court had in front of it. The Justice Department wanted AdX sold within twelve months of final judgment [20], while trial testimony put the open-sourcing of DFP's final auction logic at 24 months on its own [21], twice the window the government proposed for the sale [30]. A skeptic would say the remedy question is already moot. Much of the ad money has moved to closed platforms including Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Amazon, and Google earns most of its advertising revenue from search rather than from serving ads on websites [26]; the consultancy Madison and Wall wrote on Wednesday that equal access, data sharing, the removal of preferential auction rules and monitoring are unlikely to significantly change ad tech's dynamics [15]. That reads the aggregate correctly and the unit incorrectly. A publisher still selling open-web display pays Google roughly 20% at AdX [10], and the levers actually in play, real-time bidding responses to rival ad servers and the removal of Unified Pricing Rules [11], are the ones that move that number. Whether they survived the court's modifications, we do not know yet. This is the third consecutive refusal by a US court to break up a large technology company, after the Meta case over Instagram and WhatsApp and the bid to force a Chrome sale [7]. For plaintiffs preparing the Amazon and Apple matters, neither of which is scheduled for trial before 2027 [16], the working assumption now has to be that a monopolisation finding buys a conduct decree and a monitor, and that the decree text is where the case is won or lost.
What to watch
- Unsealing of the memorandum opinion, which should name the behavioral obligations the court modified and explain why every structural remedy failed.
- Whether the joint filing arrives as one agreed text or a marked-up document with competing versions on duration, trustee powers and what counts as a violation.
- Whether the Justice Department and the state coalition that filed in 2023 pursue the rejected structural relief further.
Clarity's read
What the record supports and how the coverage leans. The claims behind it follow.
Reality
- Evidence70
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+25
- Incentives65
- Confidence60
Perspective Coverage
3 publishers- Builder
- Builder 18%
- Operator
- Operator 45%
- Investor
- Investor 37%
Claim ledger
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
- [1]
Judge Leonie M. Brinkema entered a two-page order in the Eastern District of Virginia on September 2, 2026, disposing of the remedies phase of United States of America et al. v. Google LLC, filed as Document 1857 in Case 1:23-cv-108 (LMB/JFA).
- [2]
The order states that the plaintiffs' proposals for structural remedies, namely divestiture of AdX, open-sourcing of DFP's final auction logic, and contingent divestiture of DFP Remainder, "be and are REJECTED", with the capitalisation the court's own.
- [3]
Brinkema's full opinion has been temporarily sealed to give the parties time to redact information deemed confidential.
- [4]
The order does not enumerate which behavioural remedies survived, which did not, or what the court changed; the modifications are described only as those imposed in the accompanying sealed Memorandum Opinion.
- [5]
The same order records that most of the parties' proposed behavioral remedies, as modified by the Court, "be and are ACCEPTED."
- [6]
Ad Manager represented 4.1% of Google's overall revenue and 1.5% of operating profit in 2020, according to Wedbush research and analysis of court documents; more recent figures were redacted from court documents.
- [7]
The ruling is the third time in a row a judge has rejected a bid by US antitrust enforcers to break up big tech, following a Washington judge's rejection of the FTC's attempt to make Meta sell Instagram and WhatsApp and another judge's rejection of the DOJ's bid to force a Chrome divestiture.
- [8]
The order does not set an implementation date, name a trustee, or fix a duration; those terms belong to the Final Judgment, which does not yet exist.
- [9]
Within 30 days the parties must meet and confer and file one jointly proposed Final Judgment reflecting the decisions and modifications imposed in the sealed opinion, and where a provision remains unresolved both sides must include their respective versions, labelled as to the proponent.
- [10]
At AdX, publishers pay Google a 20% fee to sell ads in auctions that happen instantly when users load websites.
- [11]
Google's own filing offered to make real-time bidding responses from AdX available to rival publisher ad servers, to remove Unified Pricing Rules, and to accept a monitoring trustee, arguing for a three-year supervision period and later signalling openness to a longer one.
- [12]
In a ruling issued in April 2025, Brinkema said Google had wilfully engaged in a series of anticompetitive acts to acquire and maintain monopoly power in the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets for open-web display advertising.
- [13]
Brinkema wrote that the tie-up of Google's ad server and ad exchange let it act as a gatekeeper and maintain "a durable market share of over 90%" for its ad server.
- [14]
Shares of publicly traded adtech companies including The Trade Desk, AppLovin, Magnite and Taboola rose in Wednesday morning trading after the decision, and shares of Alphabet were also up slightly.
- [15]
Research and consultancy firm Madison and Wall wrote in a note on Wednesday that while remedies include equal access for competitors, data sharing, elimination of preferential auction rules and monitoring, it is unlikely they significantly change the dynamics of the ad tech industry.
- [16]
US antitrust cases against Amazon and Apple will not go to trial until 2027 at the earliest.
- [17]
The Justice Department and a broad coalition of states sued Google in 2023 over its dominance in advertising technology markets used by online publishers and websites.
- [18]
At the remedies trial the Justice Department argued Google cannot be trusted to run AdX given its past behavior, while Google argued a forced sale would be technically difficult and cause a long and painful transition harming customers.
- [19]
There was an outstanding question about who would actually buy AdX and whether the sale itself could create another monopoly.
- [20]
The Justice Department sought a sale of AdX within twelve months of final judgment, a demand set out in its final post-trial brief filed on November 3, 2025.
- [21]
Testimony during the trial put the engineering cost of open-sourcing DFP's final auction logic at roughly two years, with a software expert estimating 24 months for the open-sourcing work and 18 months for the data migration APIs.
- [22]
The government's proposal ran to ten years of restrictions and enumerated re-monopolisation routes it wanted policed, among them latency manipulation, signal alteration, algorithmic changes, differential pricing and bid volume limits.
- [23]
Google generated around $294 billion in advertising revenue last year.
- [24]
A DOJ spokesperson said the Antitrust Division is pleased that the court ordered substantial relief in the Google Ad Tech case and that "we are one step closer to restoring competition and bringing relief for the American people in online advertising markets."
- [25]
Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google vice-president for regulatory affairs, said the company was very pleased the court rejected the DOJ's proposal to break apart tools that help small businesses reach new customers and grow.
- [26]
A large share of ad dollars has shifted to closed platforms including Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Amazon, as well as to commerce media networks and streaming TV, and Google generates most of its ad revenue from search rather than from serving ads on websites.
- [27]
Counting 30 days from the September 2, 2026 order, the jointly proposed Final Judgment is due on or about October 2, 2026.
- [28]
Google argued that breaking apart Google Ad Manager, which includes both the ad exchange and the ad server, would risk breaking a tool used for purposes beyond open-web display ads, such as app and video ads.
- [29]
Ad Manager's 1.5% share of Google's 2020 operating profit was about 37% of its 4.1% share of revenue, implying it earned at roughly a third of the company-average margin.
- [30]
The 24-month estimate for open-sourcing DFP's auction logic is twice the twelve-month window the Justice Department proposed for selling AdX.
- [31]
The gap between Google's proposed three-year supervision period and the government's proposed ten years of restrictions is seven years.
Sources
3 independent publishers whose own reporting we read for this story.
- businessinsider.comGoogle yet again avoided a breakup of its business — but it will have to play nicer
2 articles · September 3, 2026
- DOJ loses AdX divestiture bid as Brinkema accepts behavioral remedies
ppc.land
2 articles · September 3, 2026
- theguardian.comGoogle defeats US justice department bid to force ad tech sale
1 article · September 2, 2026
Topics and entities
Topics
- Antitrust remedies
- Big Tech antitrust enforcement
- Advertising technology
Entities
- Google Ad Manager
- Leonie Brinkema
- AdX
- Alphabet
- U.S. Department of Justice
- Digital Content Next
- Madison and Wall
- Lee-Anne Mulholland