Ruling letting Google dodge breakup of digital ad monopoly draws critics outrage: Olympic level of mental gymnastics | Latest Tech News
A federal decide is coming under harsh criticism for sparing Google from a pressured breakup of its digital promoting empire – despite earlier ruling that the Big Tech giant was working two separate unlawful monopolies in the online ad sector.
US District Judge Leonie Brinkema on Wednesday shut down the Justice Department’s proposal to make the company dump its “AdX” market, where it extracted a 20% charge to conduct online ad gross sales in real time. That’s despite the fact she ruled in April 2025 that Google’s conduct “substantially harmed” publishers, and said the company had “destroyed” key evidence.
“It takes an Olympic level of mental gymnastics to find that Google is operating an illegal monopoly and then decide to do nothing about it,” said Sacha Haworth, government director of the Tech Oversight Project.
Brinkema ordered Google, led by CEO Sundar Pichai, to undertake “most” of the “proposed behavioral remedies” from the DOJ and the coalition of US states that joined the antitrust lawsuit, though she didn’t state which proposals ought to be enacted.
A federal decide ruled Google doesn’t have to promote its ad exchange. Thaspol – stock.adobe.com
Her full opinion on the case shall be launched later this month, after both sides have a probability to review it and recommend redactions regarding confidential data. The particular remedies aren’t anticipated to come out until then.
The ruling marked the second time in precisely a yr that Google has dodged a breakup of its online empire despite a federal decide’s ruling that it was illegally dominating a market.
In a separate case that got here to a head last September, US District Judge Amit Mehta determined against the DOJ’s request to drive Google to dump its Chrome web browser, despite earlier figuring out that the company was a “monopolist” with a chokehold over the online search market.
“With Big Tech continuing to suffocate new and innovative businesses from gaining traction, Judge Brinkema, like Judge Mehta before her, is sending the wrong message at the wrong time,” Haworth said.
Leonie M. Brinkema is a federal decide on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. She joined the court in 1993 after being appointed by President Bill Clinton. Ballotpedia
“Between Judge Brinkema’s ruling today and Judge Mehta’s toothless rejection of breaking up Google’s search monopoly last year, it’s clearer than ever that Congress needs to act — both on structural remedies generally and to fix these specific markets,” said Laurel Kilgour, a research supervisor at the American Economic Liberties Project.
The decide also rejected a request from the DOJ and a coalition of states that joined its lawsuit to publish the source code of the “logic” that governs AdX.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai seems at an event. Bloomberg via Getty Images
“We’re very pleased the Court rejected the DOJ’s proposal to break apart tools that help small businesses reach new customers and grow,” Google vice president of regulatory affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland said in a assertion.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department’s antitrust division said it was “pleased” that the court ordered “substantial relief” to tackle Google’s monopoly despite rejecting the divestiture.
“The Department will continue to fight for fair competition,” the DOJ’s Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in a assertion. “The timing of the Court’s order reflects the tradeoffs between immediate relief and remedies obtained through years of litigation.”
In her April 2025 ruling, Brinkema decided that Google violated the Sherman Act by dominating the online writer ad server market and the ad-exchange market that connects ad patrons to sellers.
“Google further entrenched its monopoly power by imposing anticompetitive practices on its customers and eliminating desirable product features,” she wrote at the time.
Signage is seen outdoors the Google headquarters on Tuesday, July 21, 2026, in Mountain View, California. Bloomberg via Getty Images
Ahead of the trial, Brinkema expressed anger over Google’s coverage of having workers flip off their chat historical past by default – recognized internally as “Vegas mode” – despite a legal requirement to protect evidence associated to the case.
During an Aug. 29, 2024 court listening to, the decide called Google’s conduct a “clear abuse of privilege” and said “an awful lot of evidence has likely been destroyed.”
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