A federal judge ruled this week that Google will not be forced to sell its advertising business despite finding the company maintained an illegal monopoly, instead ordering the tech giant to adjust how it operates to benefit rivals. Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia handed down the decision on Wednesday, according to a report published Tuesday by TechCrunch. The ruling mirrors an earlier pattern where courts found Google acted illegally but stopped short of breaking up the company.
The decision stems from a 2023 lawsuit targeting Google's ad-technology operations, one of two major antitrust cases the Justice Department brought against the search giant's advertising empire. The first lawsuit, filed in 2020, focused on Google's search dominance, while the second zeroed in specifically on its ad-tech business. Courts sided with the government in both instances. In 2024, a court ruled that Google's search business, including its highly profitable search-ad operation, constituted an illegal monopoly, stating the company had "exercised its monopoly power" to control the search industry and search advertising. Last April, the ad-tech case reached the same conclusion. Following the 2024 search ruling, Justice Department officials proposed various breakup options, including forcing Google to divest Chrome and Android. But in September 2025, Judge Amit Mehta rejected those divestiture demands, allowing Google to retain both products while ordering the company to stop exclusive default-placement agreements and share certain search information with competitors—remedies Google is currently appealing.
Judge Brinkema's Wednesday ruling provided no details about how Google should modify its business practices to favor competitors, according to the report. The judge's complete written decision will stay sealed for 14 days to let parties involved make needed redactions. Her determination that Google had operated illegally in maintaining its ad-tech business dates to April of last year; this week's ruling addressed only what penalty the company would face. Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google's vice president for regulatory affairs, characterized the outcome positively, stating: "We're very pleased the Court rejected the DOJ's proposal to break apart tools that help small businesses reach new customers and grow."
The government's ad-tech case centered on tactics Google used to ensure its search engine became the default on devices worldwide, which helped its advertising business dominate as well. Google used exclusive contracts with device makers that established it as the default search engine across vast portions of the mobile phone market, the government contended. The company also struck revenue-sharing deals with mobile carriers—arrangements where carriers received a portion of ad revenue for maintaining Google as the default—that further solidified its standing as the standard search engine across phone markets. These agreements created a self-reinforcing cycle where Google's search dominance fed its advertising strength, making it difficult for rivals to gain traction even when offering competitive alternatives.
The ruling leaves Google's advertising operations whole but sets up an uncertain period as the company awaits specific requirements for how it must alter its practices. The decision continues a trend where judges acknowledge Google's monopolistic behavior but hesitate to impose the most severe remedy of forced sales. For an industry built on network effects and data accumulation, behavioral remedies may prove easier to engineer around than structural breakups, though implementation details will determine whether competitors gain meaningful ground.