Federal Judge Rejects DOJ Demand to Break Up Google’s Ad-Tech Business

A federal judge has ruled that Google will not be required to break up its advertising technology business, delivering a major outcome in the U.S. government’s multi-year antitrust battle against the search giant. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia decided Wednesday that the company can retain its ad-tech operations, though it must adjust its business practices to accommodate competitors.

The remedy decision follows Judge Brinkema’s ruling in April 2025, which concluded that Google had unlawfully maintained a monopoly over the digital advertising technology market. Rather than granting the Department of Justice’s request to compel a divestiture of the ad division, the court opted to order behavioral adjustments aimed at opening the market to competition.

Specific operational mandates detailing how Google must adjust its advertising operations remain undisclosed. Judge Brinkema placed the full written opinion under seal for 14 days to allow both parties to issue required redactions. The initial bench decision provided no explicit technical or contractual details regarding how the company must support rival ad platforms, as noted by The New York Times.

Google welcomed the court's decision to forgo structural remedies. "We’re very pleased the Court rejected the DOJ’s proposal to break apart tools that help small businesses reach new customers and grow," Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president for regulatory affairs, said in a statement to TechCrunch.

The outcome reflects a similar resolution in the federal government's parallel antitrust lawsuit focused on Google's search dominance. Filed by the Justice Department in 2020, that case led to a 2024 judicial ruling determining that Google exercised illegal monopoly power to dominate general search and search advertising.

In September 2025, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta rejected government proposals to force Google to sell off its Chrome web browser or Android operating system as remedies in the search case. Instead, Judge Mehta ordered Google to end exclusive default search placement agreements and share select search data with rival firms, remedies that Google is currently appealing.

The Justice Department's 2023 ad-tech lawsuit targeted the complex ecosystem that powers digital ad placement across the web. Government prosecutors argued that Google’s ad-technology dominance was directly reinforced by its control over search engine defaults, which enabled the company to secure market share while hindering rival ad networks.

To preserve its dominance across mobile devices, Google relied on exclusive distribution agreements with smartphone manufacturers that established its search engine as the default choice. Additionally, the company executed revenue-sharing arrangements with mobile network carriers, distributing a portion of ad earnings to carriers in exchange for maintaining Google as the preselected engine.