Google ad tech case ends without a breakup. Judge orders rule changes

Google will not have to sell its ad exchange. Judge Leonie Brinkema of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia decided this on 2 September 2026. The Google ad tech case had already gone against the company once. In April 2025 the same judge found that Google held an illegal monopoly in two markets: ad servers for publishers and ad exchanges. This week the court answered a different question, which was what to do about it.

Brinkema turned down the forced sale of AdX

The Department of Justice wanted the court to force a sale of AdX. AdX is the auction house where websites sell space for ads. The department also wanted Google to publish the code that runs the auction inside its ad server, DoubleClick for Publishers. The judge said no to both. She chose rules about how Google must behave, and she rewrote some of them herself. Lee-Anne Mulholland, vice president for regulatory affairs at Alphabet, said the company was “very pleased the Court rejected the DOJ’s proposal” (Search Engine Land).

Google has to pass live AdX bids to rival ad servers

The order says Google must send the real-time bid amounts from AdX to other ad servers, not only to its own. Today a publisher that moves to another ad server can lose access to Google’s buyers. That is one reason many publishers stay where they are. So the change gives website owners a real choice. Regulators are looking at ad auctions in other places too. In August the FTC and a group of state attorneys general sued Amazon over the way it ran its own ad auctions.

Unified Pricing Rules end and price floors come back

Google also has to drop Unified Pricing Rules. Those rules stopped a publisher from asking one buyer for more money than another. After the change a publisher can set a different minimum price for each bidder. Google must stop using “first look” and “last look” as well. Both let Google see or answer other bids at a better moment than everyone else. In Europe the company has already set terms for rivals to license its search data, after pressure from Brussels.

Both sides file a joint judgment within 30 days

The memorandum that explains the decision stays sealed for 14 days. Within 30 days lawyers for the Department of Justice and for Google have to file a jointly proposed final judgment. Until then nobody outside the case knows the exact wording of the rules.

For marketers the practical part is short. If publishers can set their own floors and use other ad servers, prices on the open web may move in either direction. Buyers who compare open web results only against last year’s numbers may be surprised. So it is worth asking your media agency, before the final judgment lands, how much of your display money goes through Google Ad Manager and what happens if a large publisher leaves it.

Update, 18 September 2026: the full 106-page opinion is now public

The court unsealed Judge Brinkema’s full opinion on 16 September 2026. It runs to 106 pages and fills in what the September order left out. A court-appointed technical monitor will sit over Google’s ad tech business for six years, with access to staff, systems and source code. The obligations apply worldwide, not only in the United States.

The opinion also names the plumbing. Google must build API connections from AdX and DFP to Prebid, the open-source header bidding project, and they have to work as well as its own. AdX must bid into rival publisher ad servers on the same terms it gives DFP. Google must share win and loss bid data with publishers and publish documentation of how DFP picks a winner. On the buying side, AdWords may no longer bid straight into DFP, favour Google’s own tools, or use first-party data to advantage them. Display and Video 360 was left alone.

Both sides file proposed final judgments by 2 October 2026. The rules start 60 days after the judge signs the order. Anyone buying display should ask their agency, before that date, which of these changes their supply chain actually depends on.