A US federal court has issued a ruling that will be decisive for the entire technology sector: the Department of Justice will not be able to force Google to sell its advertising exchange AdX. Judge Leonie Brinkema dismissed the lawsuit seeking to break up the business, effectively closing one of the most high-profile antitrust sagas of recent years.
This defeat for regulators looks especially symbolic against a backdrop of a series of similar failures. US authorities have now lost three consecutive attempts to forcibly dismantle the largest IT corporations: earlier, the court allowed Google to keep the Chrome browser, and Meta (recognized as an extremist organization in Russia) defended Instagram and WhatsApp. Judge Brinkema found that selling AdX is technically impractical and would cause disproportionate harm to the company's clients.
Context and essence of the claims
The proceedings have dragged on since 2023, when the Justice Department and a number of states accused Google of monopolizing the online advertising technology market. In April 2025, the judge sided with the prosecution, finding that the company illegally tied publishers to its exchange and charged a 20% commission on every transaction. However, now, at the stage of determining the remedy, the court chose a softer path — not divestiture, but restructuring the operation of advertising services, including expanding competitors' access to auction bid data.
The economic arithmetic of this dispute is also telling. With Alphabet's total market capitalization at $4.08 trillion, the Ad Manager service brings in only 4.1% of revenue and 1.5% of operating profit. In other words, regulators were fighting over an asset that is more of a strategic link for Google's business than a key source of income.
The market reacted instantly to the news: Alphabet's shares rose, as investors perceived the verdict as the lifting of a long-term regulatory cloud.
However, calling this victory absolute would be premature. Ahead of the company lie pressure from European regulators, shaky positions in the artificial intelligence race, and rising AI infrastructure costs that are increasingly worrying shareholders.
My view: This decision is a landmark signal for the entire industry. It demonstrates that the US judicial system is extremely skeptical of the radical measure of forcibly breaking up successful platforms. Instead, the market received more targeted adjustments, which will likely become a template for future antitrust proceedings in the digital economy.