Published September 25
Last week, the court decision in the Google antitrust ad tech decision was finally unsealed, two weeks after Judge Leonie Brinkema ordered a slew of behavioral remedies instead of a structural breakup of the tech giant.
Judge Brinkema previously ruled that Google illegally monopolized two open-web display ad markets in 2025: the publisher ad server market and ad exchange market. There are several takeaways within the 106-page decision, and plenty of industry reaction.
The thinking behind the structural changes
The unsealed decision gives more insight into the why behind Judge Brinkema’s decision to render structural remedies as impractical. Judge Amit Mehta also ordered behavioral measures in the Google search antitrust decision.
“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 that were injured by Google’s unlawful conduct, and prevent Google from reverting to anticompetitive conduct in these markets.” Judge Brinkema wrote in her decision.
There are four main categories of behavioral remedies that Google must follow - Interoperability, data sharing, non-discriminatory bidding and buy-side restrictions.
Google must connect AdX and DFP to Prebid, and integrate AdX with rival publisher ad servers, enabling AdX to submit real-time bids to rival publisher ad servers on equal terms. The tech giant must also give publishers access to winning and losing AdX bid data, portable DFP data related to open web display ads, and documentation explaining DFP’s auction decisions. AdX and DFP must operate on a non-discriminatory basis without favoring Google’s own tools. And lastly, AdWords cannot bid directly into DFP or favor Google-owned ad-tech tools based on ownership.
A federal monitor will oversee these remedies for 6 years, with Judge Brinkema noting that every behavioral remedy would be fully in effect within 15 months. In her eyes, a complete divestiture would span multiple years.
Judge Brinkema wrote “Any structural remedy ‘runs the risk of impairing rather than enhancing competition,’ especially given the Supreme Court’s warning that ‘markets are often more effective than the heavy hand of judicial power when it comes to enhancing consumer welfare.’”
The industry reacts
In the days that the unsealed decision came out, Jason Kint and Ari Paparo, arguably the two leading voices who have followed both Google antitrust trials the whole way, shared that they feel Google came out as winners with the final decision.
“Google won across the board,” Paparo wrote on Twitter. “The DOJ arguments were too broad and imprecise. The actual remedies are things Google was probably willing to do anyway.”
“We're disappointed the Court stopped short of requiring a breakup after finding Google illegally monopolized and tied together multiple parts of the digital advertising market,” Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, added. “Google's main argument for stopping at behavioral remedies was that it has already made, or committed to make, many of these changes. Now it must actually follow through — and the Court will have to enforce it.”
Judge Brinkema noted that the speed of ad tech played into her decision making, since these fast-moving industries “are remarkable for [their] constant and rapid change,” imposing a remedy “is not unlike trying to shoe a galloping horse.”
Even before the ad tech antitrust case was first filed in 2023, Google’s business was changing, moving away from display advertising and into YouTube and AI. Google revealed during the court proceedings that AdWords impressions dropped from 40% in 2019 to 11% in 2025.
Meanwhile, YouTube drove over $60 billion in revenue last year, with more than $40 billion in ad revenue. And Google CEO Sundar Pichai said earlier this year that “we still see AI as the most profound way to advance our mission.”
Disagreements on how a breakup would impact competition
While DOJ lawyers argued that breaking up Google would increase competition, Google responded that it could move ad spend away from open-web advertising and into different channels, as Judge Brinkema noted.
“Google contests this assertion, arguing that divestiture of AdX may actually harm competition in the relevant markets because it may incentivize Google to shift investments away from open-web display advertising and towards other ad formats, which would “cause AdWords advertisers to shift their spend away, [and] in turn . . . hurt open-web display publishers who want AdWords demand.”
Kint, who watched this play out in the courtroom, said “That felt like the mafia when we were in the courtroom,” he wrote on Twitter. “If you take away our fruits (as SCOTUS says) then we’re taking our spend elsewhere to one of our other chokepoints/gatekeepers.”
Google has not made a public statement since the decision was unsealed. On September 2, Google’s vp and global head of regulatory affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland said the company is “very pleased” with the Court’s decision not to require a breakup.