On April 17th, 2025, Judge Brinkema ruled that Google did act illegally to acquire and maintain monopoly power in online advertising. Now, DOJ and Google lawyers are returning to the courtroom to argue over whether this should lead to a Google breakup by forcing the company to sell its AdX exchange.
In the initial trial, the DOJ argued that Google unfairly locked up the market for ad tech tools that publishers and advertisers rely on to monetize their websites and market their goods. Google responded that it created efficient products that work well for customers and said it faced plenty of competition.
Read on below for all of the updates and notes from the case.
The Atlantic, Penske, and Vox Media have all sued Google for antitrust violations
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty ImagesLawsuits seeking damages from Google’s illegal ad tech monopoly are piling up following the Justice Department’s successful antitrust case. Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company, is the latest in a wave of media companies that have filed suit against Google, seeking to be reimbursed for the monopoly profits the tech company allegedly made at publishers’ expense.
“Absent Google’s conduct, Vox Media would be able to make available even more, higher quality impressions for purchase on Vox Media’s webpages and create more high-quality, premium journalism,” Vox Media alleges in its lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the Southern District of New York. The Atlantic, which is owned by Laurene Powell Jobs, filed a similar lawsuit in the same district this week, as did Penske Media, which is an investor in Vox Media and owns brands including Rolling Stone, Billboard, and The Hollywood Reporter. Later on Wednesday, two more publishers — McClatchy Media Company and Condé Nast owner Advance Publications — filed similar lawsuits. Google is also facing lawsuits from ad tech providers like PubMatic and OpenX, some of which testified in the trial about how Google’s dominance shut out competition.
Read Article >Judge wants to fix Google’s ad tech monopoly before it’s too late
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The VergeGoogle and the Justice Department had their last chance to make their case before Judge Leonie Brinkema Friday before she decides whether Google needs to be broken up to remedy its ad tech monopoly.
Brinkema expects to issue her ruling next year, but understands that “time is of the essence,” as Reuters reported. While the DOJ wants the court to force Google to sell its AdX exchange, and leave open the option to force a sale of its publisher ad server, Google argued that only behavioral changes were necessary to remedy the issues the court found with its business. Brinkema previously ruled that Google held an illegal monopoly in two ad tech markets and illegally tied together two of its tools.
Read Article >The judge tasked with deciding Google’s fate would rather not
Image: Cath Virginia / The VergeAs the second phase of the Google ad tech trial was winding down, Judge Leonie Brinkema was still hoping that Google and the Justice Department would take the decision out of her hands.
“My favorite phrase is ‘Let’s settle this case,’” she told attorneys for both sides shortly before adjourning the courtroom after more than 10 days of trial in the remedies case. Brinkema ruled in April that Google had illegally monopolized the market for publisher ad servers and ad exchanges, and illegally tied its products together to make it difficult for customers to move to competitors’ options. As it turns out, that ruling might have been the easy part — after two more weeks of arguments, Brinkema is now tasked with deciding what should be done to restore competition to the markets Google stifled for a decade. That involves untangling hours of technical testimony where experts were at odds about what is even possible to separate from Google’s proprietary systems without creating new problems. With that in mind, it’s not hard to understand why Brinkema told the attorneys that this is the kind of case “that ought to settle.”
Read Article >- The Google ad tech case is the kind that “ought to settle,” judge says.
Google and the DOJ just wrapped their two-week remedies trial until closing arguments on November 17th. Judge Leonie Brinkema is still holding out hope for a settlement to avoid the tricky technical issues of a court-ordered remedy.
- Who will monitor the Google’s compliance?
That’s what Brinkema wanted to know as the case wound down. She wants the parties to consider what kind of committee should be appointed by the court. “That is part of the key of making whatever the final remedy is work,” she said. “I would be very concerned about any monitor who might have any stake in the outcome.”
- Google’s technical expert warns DOJ’s proposals create a “huge issue.”
Google brought back its technical expert Jason Nieh for a brief response to the DOJ’s rebuttal. Nieh claimed that Wheatland’s conception of how the open-sourced final auction logic would work was new and not technically feasible. Brinkema pushed back, saying that her understanding was that all that functionality is “already there” inside DFP and “all they want you to do basically is open the box.” Nieh said that wouldn’t work since the code is always evolving and it would be harder to stick back together with Google’s system.
- Daily Mail executive warns of a “drag” on Google competitors without a break up.
If the court only imposes behavioral restrictions on Google, Daily Mail Chief Digital Officer Matthew Wheatland warned in the DOJ’s rebuttal, there would still be a “gray area on our decision making process” to switch ad servers since they’d need to be sure the remedies would have “lasting effects” on Google’s actions.
Breaking up (Google) is hard to do
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty ImagesBreaking up Google’s ad tech monopoly is, apparently, like going to Mars or trying to replace Michael Jordan — dubiously possible and a huge amount of work.
Those were some of the analogies witnesses testifying in Google’s defense told a federal judge this week as the company mounts its second attempt to stave off a break up. After successfully beating that fate in the Justice Department’s Search case, Google made its case to Virginia-based District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema to let it keep its ad tech business intact too. Along the way, Google witnesses argued it need not give up monopoly power to restore the competition it damaged, and the judge gave mixed signals about how she may rule.
Read Article >- DOJ will continue its rebuttal on Monday.
We heard more testimony from Google’s technical expert Jason Nieh this afternoon about why he thinks divesting AdX and DFP would be much harder than the DOJ’s experts said. On Monday, the DOJ will bring DailyMail.com chief digital officer Matthew Wheatland in to testify in its rebuttal case, and may add an expert or two.
- Google’s anticompetitive behavior “was always a moving target.”
Former News Corp ad tech executive Stephanie Layser worries that even if Brinkema limits Google’s bad conduct, it will simply find a new way to make things difficult for publishers in ways that will be hard to detect. Layser said she felt like a “conspiracy theorist” about her suspicions Google was harming her business — until discovery in this case.
Google is destroying independent websites, and one sees no choice but to defend it anyway
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty ImagesTo WikiHow, Google is both tormentor and savior. And on Wednesday, as the search giant mounted its defense in the ongoing ad tech remedies trial, the how-to site came to Google’s rescue.
WikiHow CEO Elizabeth Douglas described to a court how websites like hers are the middle of an “AI apocalypse.” WikiHow, a website that gives step-by-step practical advice, is suffering from a new paradigm shift in how people find information online. Thanks to new AI tools including AI chatbots and Google’s own AI Overviews in its search results pages, users across the web are clicking through to websites less and less — and as a result, seeing and clicking on the ads on their sites less, too.
Read Article >- Should remedies remove Google’s monopoly power?
Google economic expert Andres Lerner testified that in the world that would have existed previously but for Google’s anticompetitive conduct, Google would still have monopoly power. Yet he generally agreed that remedies should unfetter the market from Google’s anticompetitive conduct. Brinkema said that seemed “inconsistent with the concept that some monopoly power can continue. There’s a tension there.”
- Vibe coding won’t help move AdX from Google.
Google security engineering VP Heather Adkins testified that while AI can help “autocomplete” some code that might be useful in a forced migration Google’s ad tools, vibe coding doesn’t produce secure enough code yet to make it so that a human doesn’t need to be looped into the process.
- WikiHow CEO says Google’s ad tech helps it survive the “AI apocalypse” its search tools helped create.
Elizabeth Douglas testified in Google’s defense that breaking up the ad tech tools her business relies on would introduce immense uncertainty in the one part of her business that feels relatively stable in terms of set up. But Google’s AI overviews, she said, are also part of the reason for WikiHow’s uncertain future, since they often keep users from clicking through to its pages.
- AT&T’s breakup looms large.
DOJ attorney David Geiger asked Goodwin about his claim that AT&T’s breakup slowed tech progress — was he also aware it accelerated the development of the cell phone? Goodwin said no, and Brinkema interjected, “yeah, but we lost Bell Labs. That’s what people comment on.”
- Divestitures often fail, Google expert says.
Former investment banker Shane Goodwin, who specialized in divestitures, gave several examples of such deals that later resulted in assets being sold back to the original firm, or didn’t achieve their goals. One example was the Sprint-T-Mobile merger that required a divestiture to Dish that was meant to result in a formidable 5G competitor.
- Google defense continues on through the government shutdown.
The company continues its defense today after Brinkema declined to pause the case amid the funding gap for the DOJ.
- Judge points out the “two elephants in the room.”
Brinkema says this includes the fact that the expected outcome of this trial is a court order that Google could be held in contempt of court over if it breaks, and a long list of other lawsuits it faces. Wouldn’t these things temper Google’s behavior? Goel says Google likely would comply with a court order, but the problem is that it’s nearly impossible to list all the ways Google might later figure out how to advantage itself again.
- Rival ad exchange CEO doesn’t know if he’d buy AdX.
PubMatic’s Goel said he didn’t have enough information about what a divested AdX would entail or how much it would cost to know if he would buy it. It’s a stark contrast from the search trial, where AI companies and rival search firms leapt at the chance to buy Chrome.
- Is Google dragging its feet to fix a bug that hurts a rival?
Rajeev Goel, CEO of rival ad exchange PubMatic, testified that he spoke to Google eight months ago about an issue where its advertiser tool wouldn’t buy some publisher inventory through PubMatic’s exchange. Goel said Google told him that was due to a bug they’re working to fix. Assuming that’s true, he said, Google still stands to make more money if it deprioritizes a fix.
- A break up could plummet open web display advertising.
Google executive Nirmal Jayaram, who previously worked on Google’s advertiser tools, warned that a divestiture would likely degrade products for advertisers, and lead more of them to move from open web display ads to other formats that give them a greater return on their investments.
- “Going to the moon is simpler than going to Mars.”
That’s how Google Ad Manager engineering director Glenn Berntson described the difference between a divestiture of AdX that excludes Google’s proprietary infrastructure versus one that includes it. Both are huge undertakings, he said.
- Judge considers whether remedies should account for publisher size.
Brinkema said she’s thinking about whether she needs to consider different classes of publishers, since those of various sizes have different needs. Some small publishers, for example, may make deals with local businesses for advertising, while others may use Google’s tools only for programmatic ads.
- The government wants an “extremely onerous” break up, witness alleges.
Google executives say the products the DOJ seeks to pull apart are global in nature, and span and types outside of this case. Google product management director George Levittw testified that the DOJ’s request would be “the most complicated and risky project that I have seen in my time at Google.”
- Google begins its defense.
The company’s attorneys have so far called up three different executives who are making the case that a break up would be far more complex than the government portrayed.
