US v. Google redux: all the news from the ad tech trial – The Verge

The Atlantic, Penske, and Vox Media have all sued Google for antitrust violations

2026-01-15T10:59:15-05:00

Lawsuits 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. …

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Judge wants to fix Google’s ad tech monopoly before it’s too late

2025-11-21T18:07:05-05:00

Google 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 …

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The judge tasked with deciding Google’s fate would rather not

2025-10-06T17:41:07-04:00

As 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 par …

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Breaking up (Google) is hard to do

2025-10-03T20:08:35-04:00

Breaking 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 t …

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Google is destroying independent websites, and one sees no choice but to defend it anyway

2025-10-02T15:58:30-04:00

To 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 clickin …

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Can Google be trusted without a break up?

2025-09-27T01:20:05-04:00

On day three of the two-week remedies trial in the Justice Department's ad tech case against Google, Judge Leonie Brinkema boiled down the argument to one key issue: trust. Brinkema interrupted testimony from a DOJ expert with a hypothetical: should she issue a strict order modifying Google's behavior, could it resolve the issues at hand if "you had confidence that Google would actually act in complete good faith?"

The question felt particularly pointed, given how the Google trial Brinkema presided over last year unfolded. Over three weeks, the DOJ repeatedly presented examples of Google employees allegedly using chat messages to avoid leav …

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Google begins its battle for the ‘unofficial currency of the internet’

2025-09-22T21:58:29-04:00

Google has spent a decade sharpening its "weapons" in an industry that helps sustain large swaths of the open internet, the Justice Department argued before a federal judge Monday. After years of operating an illegal monopoly in two ad tech markets and unlawfully tying its products together, nothing short of a break up will suffice to overcome Google's "massive head start" over rivals, it claims.

DOJ attorney Julia Tarver Wood began her opening arguments in the remedies trial for the US v. Google ad tech case by quoting Winston Churchill's warning that "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." The government argued tha …

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The US government is taking a second stab at breaking up Google

2025-09-20T09:27:24-04:00

Starting Monday, the US government will get another crack at convincing a federal judge to break up Google, after a different judge decided to keep it intact despite finding it to be a monopolist.

Lawyers for Google and the Justice Department will return to a federal courthouse in Alexandria, VA for a roughly two-week trial about how to restore competition to the advertising technology markets that Google illegally monopolized. It comes just weeks after DC District Court Judge Amit Mehta - who issued a historic ruling deeming Google a monopoly in online search - delivered his prescription for restoring competition to the online search marke …

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DOJ asks court to split up Google’s ad tech empire

2025-05-06T10:44:03-04:00

The US Department of Justice filed a plan in court to make Google divest its advertising marketplace and ad management platform, part of a proposal to address the company's "decade-long campaign of exclusionary conduct," which a judge has declared violates antitrust law.

On Monday, the DOJ and Google both filed requests for remedying the tech giant's legally declared ad-tech monopoly. The DOJ plan proposes having Google sell two major pieces of its business: its Ad Exchange (AdX) and its ad management platform DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP), which is now called Google Ad Manager. Google, which plans to appeal the original verdict, asks th …

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Google is in more danger than ever of being broken up

2025-04-18T18:27:19-04:00

After half a decade fighting to keep its empire together, Google's defenses are wearing thin.

The company is facing a two-front war that could fundamentally reshape its business, and, the US Department of Justice argues, open new opportunities for its competitors. Last year a federal judge deemed Google an unlawful monopolist in the online search market, and this past week, a different judge declared it had monopolized the ad tech market, too. On Monday, it will face a new stage in that first battle: a three-week trial in Washington, DC to determine the appropriate remedies to restore competition to online search.

Google has vowed to appe …

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