A federal judge in Virginia has rejected a proposal by the U.S. Justice Department to break up Alphabet Inc.’s Google advertising technology business. The ruling spares the company from a forced sale of its online advertising exchange, marking a symbolic victory for the tech giant. This decision is part of an antitrust lawsuit that began more than three years ago, following a January 2023 suit filed by the Justice Department and several state attorneys general over Google's display advertising unit.
The court previously ruled in April 2025 that Google holds illegal monopolies on ad exchanges and the servers used to host publisher ads. The government's case portrayed Google as controlling multiple sides of the digital advertising marketplace, owning both the platform publishers use to sell ads and the exchange where transactions occur while commanding huge advertiser demand. The Justice Department argued that Google could not be trusted to run the online advertising exchange.
Although the judge declined to order a divestiture, the court ordered Google to retool the system powering its monopoly and end practices that depress ad rates for web publishers. Google must now make its ad tech tools work with those operated by rivals to benefit competitors, though the specific measures were not disclosed publicly. This outcome marks the third time in recent years that U.S. antitrust enforcers have sought a Big Tech breakup and lost.