Google wins ruling rejecting breakup of its ad business

Google has secured another important victory in its legal battle over online advertising. A judge on Wednesday rejected competition authorities’ request to force the company to sell AdX, its advertising exchange for real-time auctions.

AdX places advertisements before users when they open a webpage and charges advertisers a 20% fee. The current case began with a 2023 lawsuit brought by the U.S. Justice Department and numerous states. Two years later, the judge found that Google held an illegal monopoly in the online advertising and ad-exchange markets and had forced advertisers to use AdX.

The parties have since argued over how Google should change its business practices. Google said a forced sale would be technically difficult and would create longer-term uncertainty for advertisers. Instead, the company offered an easier way for customers to switch to rival advertising exchanges.

The decision reverses an earlier ruling by Judge Brinkema that Google held illegal monopolies over servers hosting publishers’ advertisements and over the exchanges connecting buyers and sellers. That ruling said Google unlawfully tied publishers to its ad server and compelled them to use AdX.

For U.S. authorities, the latest decision represents another setback in their efforts to limit the power of major technology companies. Alphabet avoided a forced sale of the Chrome browser and Android operating system in another case about a year ago. A U.S. court also rejected the Federal Trade Commission’s request to force Meta to sell Instagram and WhatsApp.