U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema rejected a Justice Department request to force Google to sell its AdX advertising exchange, Search Engine Land, Ars Technica, PPC Land, Engadget, and the Financial Post reported.
On Sept. 2 she entered a short public order in the Eastern District of Virginia ad-tech case. According to PPC Land’s account of that order, the court rejected structural remedies including divestiture of AdX, open-sourcing DFP’s final auction logic, and a contingent divestiture of DFP Remainder. It accepted most of the parties’ proposed behavioral remedies as modified by the court, without listing which terms survived.
AdX is the marketplace where publishers sell digital ads in real-time auctions. The public order did not spell out the specific conduct rules. Engadget, citing Bloomberg, said the remedies involve Google opening its ad-tech tools to rivals.
Ars Technica reported Brinkema sealed the full decision for 14 days so the parties could request redactions. The parties were directed to meet and file a proposed final judgment reflecting the sealed opinion within 30 days.
The April 2025 monopoly findings in publisher ad servers and ad exchanges are not reversed. Google avoids a structural breakup of this stack for now, but it still faces court-ordered behavioral limits whose details are not yet public.