Google Manages to Weasel Its Way Out of Selling Its Ad Tech Business

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Google doesn’t need to break up its advertising technology business after it was found to be a monopoly, according to a new report from the New York Times .

The U.S. Department of Justice sued Google in 2023 under President Joe Biden’s tenure, which at the time argued that Google controlled the tech used by every major website publisher to offer ad space. Google also controlled the tool used by advertisers to buy that ad space and controlled the ad exchange that matches publishers to advertisers when that ad space is sold.

That seemed like an obvious monopoly that would need to be remedied by enforcing antitrust laws. But Judge Leonie M. Brinkema, a U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, has now ordered Google to make changes but didn’t yet give details about what those changes might be, according to the Times.

“We’re very pleased the Court rejected the DOJ’s proposal to break apart tools that help small businesses reach new customers and grow,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, VP Regulatory Affairs at Google, said in an emailed statement Wednesday.

The full ruling has been sealed temporarily to give Google time to redact sensitive business information, according to the Wall Street Journal . Another antitrust case heard by Judge Amit Mehta in 2024 also found that Google’s tactics in the search industry amounted to monopoly behavior, but that judge also declined to take drastic action like forcing the company to sell off the Chrome browser .

Activist organizations who have tried to curb the excesses of Big Tech were unhappy with the ruling Wednesday. Sacha Haworth, Executive Director of The Tech Oversight Project, pointed out the absurdity of finding that Google was operating as a monopoly in the ad-tech business but not enforcing antitrust laws that would cause any real changes.

“It takes an Olympic level of mental gymnastics to find that Google is operating an illegal monopoly and then decide to do nothing about it,” Haworth said in a statement to Gizmodo.

“With Big Tech continuing to suffocate new and innovative businesses from gaining traction, Judge Brinkema, like Judge Mehta before her, is sending the wrong message at the wrong time,” Haworth continued. “Big Tech monopolies are making our national affordability crisis even worse, and we should be denying monopolists the ill-gotten fruits of their monopolies, not rewarding them.”

Haworth notes that Judge Brinkema feels Congress and not the courts should shape policies on competition but The Tech Oversight Project believes the court failed to carry out the existing laws that are already on the books.

“Brinkema and Mehta prove that the courts alone will not save us from Big Tech, and unfortunately, it’s those very same courts that have granted Big Tech the right to spend billions of dollars to block Congress from doing its job and regulating the industry,” said Haworth.