Judge orders Google to change ad auction rules

A federal judge has ordered Google to change its rules for auctioning online advertising on its platforms after finding last year that the search giant had an illegal monopoly over the technology connecting publishers and advertisers.

The remedies were made public late Wednesday, when U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema unsealed her opinion from earlier this month.

In the decision, Brinkema ruled that Google did not have to break up its ad tech business, rejecting the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) request to force the company to sell off its advertising exchange or open-source the technology behind its platform for publishers.

She accepted “most” of the behavioral remedies put forward by Google and the federal government, but the specifics remained under seal until Wednesday.

“The Court finds that structural remedies are neither realistic nor needed and that the parties’ substantially overlapping behavioral remedies as modified in this Memorandum Opinion will be sufficient to ‘effectively pry open to competition’ the ad tech markets,” Brinkema wrote in the opinion.

The judge suggested the DOJ’s rationale for a breakup “boils down to a lack of trust that Google will comply with an Order from this Court and an unrealistic desire for certainty.”

“Lack of trust alone or desire for ‘guaranteed certainty’ cannot justify divestiture,” she added.

However, Google will be barred from engaging in the behavior that ultimately prompted Brinkema to rule last April that it had improperly secured monopoly power over two markets involved in selling online ads.

Under the decision, the company will not be allowed to enforce policies tying its publisher-side platform, DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP), to its ad exchange platform, AdX.

The opinion also bars Google from reimplementing a series of functions that required publishers using DFP to give AdX special treatment on bids for ad space.

The firm is required to make both platforms interoperable with header bidding software, which allows publishers to offer up ad space to multiple ad exchanges before moving forward.

It also must make AdX interoperable with rival publisher-side platforms and provide publishers with data from both AdX and DFP.

Both platforms are barred from prioritizing Google’s own products, as is the company’s advertiser-side platform, AdWords.

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward touted the ruling as “a significant victory for this Department’s efforts to protect and restore competition.”

“We will continue to review the opinion to consider the Department’s options,” he added in a statement. “Under President Trump’s and Attorney General Blanche’s leadership, we will never cease fighting for fair competition.”

It marks the second time that a judge has declined to break up Google’s products.

While U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled in August 2024 that the company had an illegal monopoly over online search, he ultimately rejected the DOJ’s request to force Google to sell off its Chrome browser last September.