Department of Justice Again Wins Substantial Relief Against Google
Remedies for Google’s Unlawful Monopolization to Help Restore Competition in Online Advertising Technology Markets
Wednesday, September 16, 2026 - The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division won substantial relief in its monopolization case against Google in advertising technology markets. In United States et al. v. Google LLC, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ordered significant behavioral relief, including requiring close integration between Google’s products and products offered by rivals, including the open-source solutions offered by Prebid. The court ordered further relief that will help to pry open these markets to competition.
“The Court’s ruling in the Google ad tech case marks a significant victory for this Department’s efforts to protect and restore competition,” said Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. “We will continue to review the opinion to consider the Department’s options. Under President Trump’s and Attorney General Blanche’s leadership, we will never cease fighting for fair competition.”
As a direct result of the work of the Department’s trial team, Google’s executives repeatedly offered new pledges of injunctive relief while on the stand during the remedies trial. This extended after the trial, when Google offered a further-revised proposed final judgment with additional concessions. For example, Google committed that AdWords, its advertiser tool, would not engage in discriminatory bidding to the detriment of both advertisers and publishers. Because of the Department’s efforts during the remedies phase, Google also agreed to broaden the categories of advertising inventory covered by the final judgment, disclose how its black-box advertising auctions work, and provide new technical support and data to its competitors and customers. These actions highlight the strong case the Department put on at trial.
The court’s decision recognizes that it must seek to terminate Google’s monopolies, unfetter the markets from Google’s anticompetitive conduct, ensure that there remain no practices likely to result in monopolization, and deny Google the fruit of its unlawful actions: its monopoly power, scale, and profits. In so holding, the court rejected Google’s argument that the termination of monopolies is not a proper objective for monopolization cases.
The court confirmed the Department’s position that it is not enough to order Google to cease its prior anticompetitive behavior. The court imposed interoperability and data-sharing requirements, anti-discrimination remedies, and prohibitions on Google’s self-preferencing bidding behavior. This ruling underscores the need for antitrust remedies to be forward-looking and comprehensive, and it reiterates that remedies can include conditions on products beyond the monopolized product markets. In addition to prohibiting Google’s past anticompetitive conduct, the court ordered the following relief:
- Required Integrations with Prebid and Competing Publisher Ad Servers. The court recognized the importance of injecting new competition and breaking Google’s unlawful tie between AdX and DFP. Google must create and support integrations between AdX and Prebid, and DFP and Prebid. Prebid is an open-source industry standard for real-time bidding. In addition, AdX will be required to submit real-time bids to other publisher ad servers. These integrations will give publishers more control over the sale of their inventory and offer access to important, unique demand without publishers being forced to use both DFP and AdX.
- Data Sharing. The court also imposed meaningful data-sharing requirements on Google. Google will be required to allow publishers to access and export their own data from DFP and AdX, which will make it easier for publishers to switch ad tech providers.
- AdWords Must Bid in Non-Discriminatory Fashion. The court recognized the importance of AdWords to Google’s unlawful scheme. The court rejected Google’s arguments that remedies could not touch AdWords, Google’s “golden goose,” and ordered that AdWords cannot bid preferentially into AdX or other Google ad tech tools because of Google’s ownership of those tools. AdWords also cannot bid directly into DFP.
- Monitor. A monitor will be put in place to facilitate enforcement of Google’s compliance with the Final Judgment. Google will be subject to the oversight of this monitor and a technical committee for six years, the length of the Final Judgment.
The Department continues to review the court’s opinion and will determine appropriate next steps to ensure that competition is restored to these markets that Google has unlawfully dominated for far too long.
U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
Source: Justice.gov
