U.S. Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, let Google keep its online advertising exchange, rejecting U.S. antitrust enforcers’ bid to force a sale of the company’s ad tech business. The ruling means publishers still have to pay Google a 20% fee to sell ads in auctions that happen instantly when users load websites. The machinery stays intact. So does the tollbooth.
Who Pays for the Setup
The people at the bottom of this arrangement are the publishers and, by extension, the consumers of information on the open web. Brinkema had already ruled in April 2025 that Google holds illegal monopolies on servers that host publisher ads and ad exchanges that sit between buyers and sellers. She found that Google unlawfully locked publishers on its ad server into using its AdX. At the time, she said Google’s anticompetitive conduct "substantially harmed Google's publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web."
That language came after the DOJ and a broad coalition of states sued Google in 2023 over its dominance in markets for advertising technology used by online publishers and websites. The case moved through the courts, and the company still walked away with the core of its ad empire untouched. The state’s answer was a lawsuit. Google’s answer was to keep the system running.
What the Court Allowed
Brinkema declined to make Google sell AdX and accepted most of the parties’ proposed behavioral remedies. That leaves the structure of control in place while adjusting the rules around it. The judge did not order the breakup that U.S. antitrust enforcers wanted. Instead, Google escaped a forced sale of the exchange that sits in the middle of the ad market, where buyers and sellers are matched in auctions that happen instantly when users load websites.
At trial last year on remedies, the DOJ argued that Google cannot be trusted to run AdX, given its past behavior. Google pushed back, saying a forced sale would be technically difficult and would create a long and painful transition that would hurt customers. The company also tried to distinguish the DOJ’s demand from Google’s own previous offer to sell AdX to end an EU antitrust investigation, which Reuters reported in 2024. Different forum, same giant. Same game.
The Limits of the Antitrust Theater
The ruling is the third time in a row that a judge has rejected a bid by U.S. antitrust enforcers to break up Big Tech in a crackdown that started during President Donald Trump’s first term. U.S. antitrust cases against Amazon and Apple will not go to trial until 2027 at the earliest. The legal machinery keeps grinding forward, but the companies keep their power while the calendar drags on.
Google’s 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. Even there, the numbers show what kind of business this is: not the whole empire, just one profitable piece of a much larger machine.
The DOJ and the states brought their case in 2023. Brinkema ruled in April 2025 that Google held illegal monopolies. On Wednesday, she stopped short of ordering the sale that antitrust enforcers wanted. The exchange stays in Google’s hands, publishers keep paying the fee, and the open web keeps running through a gatekeeper that the court found had already locked people in.