Judge says company must adjust its advertising tools to work with rivals' tech.

A 2025 ruling found that Google, headquartered in Mountain View, illegally monopolized two advertising technology markets, spurring a U.S. Justice Department call to break up the company. Justin Sullivan - Getty Images/TNS

By LEAH NYLEN AND DAVEY ALBA | BLOOMBERG

Alphabet Inc.'s Google doesn't have to sell off its advertising exchange and instead must make its ad tech tools work with those operated by rivals, a federal judge ruled Wednesday,

in a move that saves the tech giant from a second bid to force a breakup.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema issued her decision under seal accompanied by a short order rejecting the Justice Department's bid to force a sale of Google's AdX. Instead, she ordered proposed behavioral changes to Google's business without describing what those are.

The redacted decision will be issued later this month.

The judge decided against a forced sale of Google despite an April 2025 ruling that the company illegally monopolized two advertising technology markets. The Justice Department had asked that Google be forced to sell its exchange and make public the auction logic that decides which advertisement will show on a website. Brinkema rejected that option, choosing to accept "most" of the behavioral changes at Google that were recommended to her.

"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, Google vice president of regulatory affairs, said in a statement.

The judge ordered the parties to meet, confer and file a joint final judgment proposal within 30 days reflecting the opinion.

If they can't resolve differences, they should include their respective proposals. Brinkema sealed much of the order for 14 days to enable the parties to view and move for redactions, if necessary.

Companies spend more than $919 billion globally on digital advertising, according to estimates by research firm EMarketer, making the industry one of the largest segments of the broader tech economy.

Google's U.S. ad operations alone are expected to bring in $101.2 billion in 2026. Most of that comes from search ads - roughly $83.8 billion -while about $17.4 billion stems from display advertising, the segment at the center of the government's case.

The Justice Department sued Google in 2023 in a second antitrust complaint against the tech giant, accusing the company of illegally monopolizing several areas of the advertising technology used to buy, sell and serve the online display ads that appear on many websites.

Google's ad tech stack sits between publishers selling display space and advertisers bidding on it, giving the company a powerful position in how prices are set and which ads appear.

Regulators have long argued that controlling both the dominant publisher ad server and one of the largest ad exchanges allowed Google to advantage its own systems at multiple points in the process.