Lisa Macpherson serves as policy director at Public Knowledge.
This week, a Virginia federal court handed down its remedies decision in the Google advertising technology antitrust matter. The outcome disappoints, and it should concern you as well.
Even if you don't follow digital policy closely, this case affects you. During autumn 2024, I published an analysis on Tech Policy Press detailing why the Google ad tech dispute carries weight for ordinary people, drawing on decades of experience observing how digital advertising has evolved since the 1990s. I argued that "Google's dominant control of the advertising technology market has hurt advertisers and publishers… but also consumers – by imposing on privacy, fueling disinformation, reducing the diversity of viewpoints online, increasing barriers to news, reducing innovation by brands, and increasing prices on goods and services." Judge Leonie Brinkema's remedies order suggests Google's stranglehold on the ad technology sector will persist—and with it, the harmful consequences.
In April 2025, Judge Brinkema determined that Google operates as an unlawful monopolist in ad technology. The Department of Justice and multiple states had filed suit in 2023. Her ruling established that Google's purchase and consolidation of ad tech infrastructure—the software systems managing how advertisers buy placements from publishers—into its Ad Exchange (AdX) constituted illegal competitive conduct. This consolidation enabled further violations including tying arrangements, self-preferencing, and pricing manipulation. The result: advertisers paid premium rates for ads while lacking transparency about placement, while publishers erected steeper paywalls to survive. We pressed Judge Brinkema to impose stringent remedies and submitted our own proposals.
The judge's latest order stops short of requiring Google to divest AdX or implement structural reforms (the full decision remains confidential). Google retains ownership of both its ad server and exchange, preserving the inherent conflict of interest. Instead, the ruling modifies how the exchange conducts auctions. If enforcement mechanisms prove adequate, the remedy may only trim some of Google's advantages in visibility, publisher access, and pricing leverage.
This decision underscores a broader problem, evident in the Google search case as well: litigation moves slowly and yields uncertain results when confronting trillion-dollar corporations in fast-moving markets. We require additional tools. The American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA), reintroduced in the Senate last June, would prohibit dominant platforms from self-preferencing, tying, and misusing proprietary data, while mandating interoperability and data portability. The Advertising Middlemen Endangering Rigorous Internet Competition Accountability Act (AMERICA Act), reintroduced in the Senate in 2025, targets ad tech specifically; it bars dominant firms from controlling multiple stages of the buying and selling chain—such as owning both an exchange and a publisher tool simultaneously. Additionally, we need an independent digital regulator capable of responding to future market shifts.
As I wrote previously, "We need to open up digital markets to bring about more competition and more choice if we want an advertising system that works for the rest of us." Based on current information, this ruling does little to advance that goal.
Source: Tech Policy Press
