Alphabet’s Google has avoided a breakup of its advertising technology business after a United States judge in Virginia rejected antitrust enforcers’ bid to force the company to sell its online advertising exchange.
Although the ad exchange represents only a small portion of Google’s overall business, the decision marks another significant symbolic setback for the US Department of Justice, which has sought to compel Google to divest assets as part of efforts to address alleged illegal monopolies.
US District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, declined to order Google to sell AdX, its advertising exchange where publishers are charged a 20 per cent fee for selling ads through instant auctions triggered when users load websites.
Instead, she approved most of the behavioral remedies proposed by the parties.
The US Justice Department and a coalition of states sued Google in 2023, accusing the technology giant of using its dominance to control key markets for advertising technology serving online publishers and websites.
In April 2025, Brinkema ruled that Google had illegally monopolised the market for servers hosting publishers’ ads and ad exchanges that connect buyers with sellers.
She found that Google had unlawfully tied publishers using its ad server to its AdX advertising exchange.
According to Brinkema, the company’s anticompetitive practices had “substantially harmed” its publisher customers, competition and, ultimately, consumers who rely on the open web for information.
During last year’s remedies trial, the US Justice Department argued that Google could not be trusted to operate AdX because of its previous conduct.
Google, however, maintained that forcing it to sell AdX would be technically challenging and could trigger a lengthy and disruptive transition that would ultimately harm customers.
The company also argued that the government’s proposed divestiture differed from an earlier offer by Google to sell AdX as part of efforts to resolve an antitrust investigation by the European Union, Reuters reported in 2024.
