Judge orders Google to retool ad monopoly system after sparing breakup

  • Judge Brinkema orders Google to stop first look, last look, and unified pricing rules in ad auctions.
  • Court requires real-time bid sharing while Google retains AdX and DFP ownership; parties to propose joint judgment in 30 days.
  • Google plans to appeal April 2025 liability ruling; faced with €2.95 billion EU fine for similar practices.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ordered Google to stop specific anticompetitive practices that had maintained its monopoly over online ad auctions, rejecting the Justice Department's request to force a sale of the advertising exchange AdX. The September 2, 2026 ruling requires Google to eliminate first look and last look privileges, deprecate unified pricing rules, and share real-time bid data with rival ad servers while retaining ownership of both DoubleClick for Publishers and AdX. The order follows the April 2025 liability ruling that found Google had monopolized the publisher ad server market with 91% share and the open-web ad exchange with a consistent 20% take rate, while illegally tying the two platforms together. The Department of Justice had sought divestiture of AdX and open-sourcing of DFP auction logic, but the court accepted a blended set of behavioral remedies instead. Both sides must submit a joint final judgment proposal within 30 days, with the full opinion sealed for 14 days for review. Google expressed satisfaction with the outcome, plans to appeal the liability ruling, and noted the parallel remedies in the search monopoly case. The decision does not resolve the company's global exposure, as the European Commission fined it €2.95 billion in September 2025 for the same underlying conduct.

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