A U.S. court has issued a remedy in the antitrust case regarding Google's advertising technology. The judge did not adopt the business division plan proposed by the U.S. Department of Justice, but required Google to adjust the way it operates its advertising business in order to leave more space for competitors.
No requirement to sell advertising services
This ruling was made by Judge Leonie M Brinkema of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. This week, she stated that Google may retain its existing advertising business and is not forced to sell related assets. However, the court requires Google to change some of its business practices in order to improve market competition.
The New York Times mentioned that the ruling does not specify how Google should rectify the situation at this time. The complete written ruling will be made public 14 days after it is sealed, to allow relevant parties to make any necessary revisions first.
Monopoly behavior was identified last year.
This ruling deals with 'how to remedy the situation', rather than whether it is illegal or not. As early as April 2025, the court had determined that Google had engaged in illegal activities while maintaining its position in the advertising technology business. The content announced this week mainly focuses on decisions regarding subsequent handling methods.
In recent years, Google has faced successive antitrust pressures in the United States. In another case related to its search business earlier on, in 2024, a court determined that Google's search and search advertising services constituted an illegal monopoly, concluding that it used its dominant market position to control the search and search advertising markets.
The processing paths for search cases are similar to those for advertising cases.
In the search case, the U.S. Department of Justice proposed various separation plans, including requiring Google to divest itself of the Chrome browser and the Android operating system. However, the judge in charge of the case, Amit Mehta, rejected these asset separation requests in September 2025, allowing Google to continue to retain Chrome and Android.
However, Mehta also requires Google to stop some default pre-installed exclusive agreements and to share some search data with competitors. Google is currently appealing against these remedial measures.
From the current results, it seems that the advertising technology case follows a similar approach: the court did not directly split Google's core business, but required it to modify its business practices in order to weaken its exclusive advantages.
Google says the ruling is favorable to it.
Google considers this result a victory. Lee - Anne Mulholland, the vice president of corporate regulatory affairs at the company, stated to TechCrunch that the court rejected the Department of Justice's proposal to split these tools, which Google describes as important products that help small and medium-sized enterprises reach new customers and achieve growth.
The U.S. government previously accused Google of occupying a large portion of the default search entries on mobile phones for a long time by signing exclusive agreements with device manufacturers. The government also stated that Google signed revenue-sharing agreements with mobile operators, allowing the latter to share advertising revenue on the condition of maintaining Google's default status, which further consolidated Google's dominant position in the mobile search market.
