Google dodges ad-tech breakup but faces six years of court oversight and open-auction rules

Google has avoided having to sell AdX and DFP, two of the pillars of its advertising empire, but they will have to stop operating as a closed and privileged ecosystem compared with their competitors, making it easier for publishers and advertisers to work with other platforms. That is what the ruling in the antitrust case between the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the tech giant establishes.

At the beginning of September, Judge Leonie Brinkema announced that the company would not have to divest AdX and DFP, but we still did not know what remedial measures would be imposed on Google after it was found guilty of maintaining a monopoly in digital programmatic advertising. Two weeks later, we now have the full ruling issued by the U.S. courts.

What measures the court has ordered in the case against Google

The ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia rejected Google’s position and confirmed that antitrust remedies must seek to end the unlawful monopoly, preventing self-preferencing and restoring fair competition in the online advertising market.

The decision imposes interoperability and data-sharing requirements, antidiscrimination measures, and prohibitions on Google’s practice of prioritizing its own bids. Specifically, the measures ordered are:

• Mandatory interoperable integration: Google must integrate AdX and DFP with Prebid, a set of free open-source tools for real-time bidding, and also allow AdX to send real-time bids to competing ad servers. This removes the unlawful tying between its tools and gives publishers greater control.
• Data access and sharing: Google must allow publishers to access and export their own data from DFP and AdX, making it easier to migrate or switch to other providers in the ad tech market.
• Ban on discrimination in bidding: the court rejected excluding AdWords from the remedies. AdWords is prohibited from making preferential or discriminatory bids on AdX and on Google’s other advertising platforms, as well as from bidding directly on DFP.
• External oversight: A monitor and a technical committee will be appointed to ensure compliance with the final judgment for a period of six years.

For his part, Deputy Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. said: “The Court’s ruling in the Google advertising technology case represents a significant victory for this Department’s efforts to protect and restore competition. We will continue reviewing the opinion to consider the Department’s options. Under the leadership of President Trump and Attorney General Blanche, we will never stop fighting for fair competition.”

Next steps

Before October 2, Google and the DOJ must submit a proposed final judgment translating those decisions into definitive legal language. If they disagree on any clause, they may submit alternative versions for Judge Brinkema to decide. Once the judge issues the final judgment, the appeals process will open.

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