A federal judge declined on September 2 to force Google to sell its advertising technology business, marking the third time U.S. antitrust enforcers have attempted to break up a Big Tech company and lost, a ruling with significant implications for New York’s advertising and media industry.
Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, refused to make Google divest AdX, the ad exchange where publishers pay Google a 20% fee to sell ads in instantaneous auctions when users load websites. The Department of Justice had argued Google could not be trusted to run the exchange after Brinkema previously ruled the company illegally quashed competition.
Instead, the judge accepted behavioral remedies and will release a detailed ruling in 14 days. Google proposed fixes including providing real-time bid access to competitors. Google executive Lee-Anne Mulholland said the company was very pleased the Court rejected the DOJ’s proposal to break apart tools that help small businesses reach new customers and grow.
For New York City, home to the largest concentration of advertising agencies and digital media companies in the United States, the ruling preserves the status quo in the digital advertising ecosystem. Many NYC-based publishers and ad agencies rely on Google’s ad tech stack, and a forced breakup could have disrupted operations across the industry.
The DOJ and a coalition of states sued Google in 2023 over its dominance in advertising technology. In April 2025, Brinkema ruled that Google holds illegal monopolies on servers that host publisher ads and on ad exchanges. Google unlawfully locked publishers into using AdX, the judge found.
The ruling raises questions about whether courts can effectively check Big Tech’s power. Sacha Haworth of The Tech Oversight Project said the rulings prove that the courts alone will not save us from Big Tech.
The decision follows two other major losses for antitrust enforcers: a federal judge rejected the FTC’s attempt to make Meta sell Instagram and WhatsApp, and another judge declined to force Google to sell its Chrome browser.
Ad Manager represented 4.1% of Google’s overall revenue and 1.5% of operating profit in 2020, according to Wedbush research. Google shares pared gains slightly after the ruling but were up 0.6% on the day.
Cases against Amazon and Apple involving smartphone and online retail markets have not yet gone to trial. The DOJ said it is evaluating appropriate next steps.
Sources: NY Post, WPLG Local 10
