Google gets to keep its ad exchange, even after a judge found it broke the law to build market power around it.
A US federal judge ruled that Google will not be forced to sell AdX, the ad exchange at the center of a Department of Justice antitrust case the company lost in 2025. The DOJ and a coalition of states had argued Google rigged ad auctions to box out rivals in the market for online display ads. The court agreed Google illegally locked publishers into using its exchange, but rejected claims that its advertiser-facing tools broke the law. During the remedy phase, the DOJ pushed for a breakup, arguing that separating the exchange from the rest of Google's ad stack was the only way to restore real competition.
The ad exchange is a small slice of Google's ad revenue, but it sits at the center of a business that touches nearly every publisher and advertiser online. A forced sale would have rippled through that whole stack, and it would have been the first real teeth applied to a Big Tech antitrust loss in years. Instead, Google keeps the pipes it was found to have rigged.
Big Tech's recent record in antitrust court has been remedies that sound tough and land soft, and this one fits the pattern.