A federal court today rejected a proposal by the U.S. Justice Department to break up Google LLC’s ad business.
The ruling came in connection with an antitrust lawsuit that began more than three years ago.
In January 2023, the Justice Department and several state attorneys general sued Google LLC over its display advertising unit. The unit helps brands purchase ad space on third-party websites. The complaint charged that Google used anticompetitive practices to maintain a dominant position in that market.
Last April, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled in favor of the Justice Department. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema found that Google’s display advertising business maintains an illegal monopoly. Prosecutors argued that the best way to remediate the situation is to sell off parts of the business. However, Brinkema rejected that line of reasoning in today’s ruling.
The Justice Department wanted Google to sell off a now-defunct display advertising service called AdX. It’s an online auction where brands bid for ad space on publishers’ websites. The service was the core focus of the antitrust lawsuit that kicked off the litigation.
Website operators historically put their ad space up for sale on AdX through a second, also defunct Google service called DFP. On paper, DFT offered the option to send ad space to AdX competitors. In practice, however, Google was found to have limited competitors’ access to DFP.
An AdX feature called First Look gave the search giant “first right of refusal” on publishers’ ad space. The lawsuit also took issue with a capability called Last Look that tracked the value of competitors’ ad space bids. The court found that Google had used the collected information to outbid rivals and thereby gain access to additional ad deals.
Today’s ruling didn’t order Google to sell off AdX, but will still require the company to change its business practices. Judge Leonie Brinkema wrote that “most of the parties’ proposed behavioral remedies, as modified by this Court, be and are accepted.” It’s unclear what those remediates are because the full ruling will only be published in two weeks.
Last year, Google proposed a series of remedies that included a commitment not to use First Look and Last Look, the AdX features that the lawsuit listed as anticompetitive. The company replaced them several years ago with a capability called Unified Pricing Rules. The Justice Department, in turn, pushed for Google to open-source certain components of DFP, the service through which publishers sent ad space to AdX.
Neither DFP nor AdX are available as standalone services. Google merged their features into a platform called Google Ad Manager several years ago. As a result, the remedies previewed in today’s order will likely focus on that service.
