Google should relax ad tech rules, appoint antitrust monitor, US judge finds

On September 16, a federal judge in Virginia suggested Google should ease its rules around online ad auctions and appoint an internal antitrust compliance monitor, without demanding the tech giant break up its advertising technology monopoly. Judge Leonie Brinkema's 106-page decision came two weeks after she rejected the U.S. Department of Justice's call for Google to dismantle its ad business.

Brinkema stated that Google's remedies would open competition in affected ad tech markets and stop the company from returning to anti-competitive behavior. Google disagreed with the liability ruling and plans to appeal; it also maintains a divestiture would harm small businesses. The judge rejected the DOJ's demand for Google to sell AdX, a platform with real-time ad auctions, but accepted proposals to stop Google from requiring websites using its ad server to also use AdX.

Google would also stop practices that kept publishers locked into its ad tech tools. The judge mandated these changes for six years, not the 15 years sought by the DOJ and various states. Google's advertising sector, which accounts for about 73% of Alphabet's revenue, could see global digital ad spending rise to $605 billion in 2024 from $424 billion in 2023.