Now that a federal court has found Google liable for illegally monopolizing open-web advertising technology, the harder question is what to do about it. The Justice Department wants a structural fix: force Google to divest AdX, the ad exchange it calls "the beating heart of how it monetizes the web," potentially alongside its ad server, with interoperability mandates phased in over as long as 14 years. Google argues for "lighter-touch remedies" — contract changes and mandated interoperability with rival ad servers — implemented within about a year.
The case for a breakup is straightforward: behavioral remedies against dominant platforms have a mixed track record, and if Google's ad tech stack was built and maintained through years of anticompetitive conduct, as the court found, only structural separation reliably removes the incentive to repeat it. A company that both runs the exchange and represents publishers and advertisers on that exchange has a built-in conflict of interest no contract term fully eliminates.
The case against a breakup is also real. Untangling systems that have operated as a single technical stack for over a decade carries genuine execution risk, and a botched divestiture could degrade ad tech reliability for the small publishers the case was ostensibly meant to protect. Judge Leigh Brinkema appears to be searching for a middle path — hard conduct remedies with independent monitoring, keeping structural divestiture in reserve if Google doesn't comply. That may prove to be the more realistic outcome, even if it leaves some critics unsatisfied that the penalty doesn't fully match the violation.
