Google should relax ad tech rules, appoint antitrust monitor, US judge finds

A federal judge said Google should relax its rules governing its online advertising auctions and appoint an internal antitrust compliance monitor, while stopping short of demanding that the Alphabet unit break up its advertising technology monopoly.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, gave her assessment in a 106-page decision unsealed on Wednesday, two weeks after she rejected the U.S. Department of Justice's insistence that Google break up its business of placing ads across the internet.

Brinkema said Google should instead change some of its business practices, despite having found in April 2025 that it maintained an illegal monopoly over some online ad technology.

The remedies "will be sufficient to effectively pry open to competition the ad tech markets that were injured by Google’s unlawful conduct, and prevent Google from reverting to anticompetitive conduct in these markets," Brinkema wrote.