A federal judge handed Google a major courtroom win on Wednesday, rejecting the Department of Justice's push to force the tech giant to sell off parts of its advertising technology empire. The ruling lets Google keep its business intact even after the same judge found the company guilty of illegally monopolizing two digital advertising markets.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema opted for behavioral remedies over structural ones, declining the DOJ's request to compel Google to divest portions of its AdX exchange business. The decision marks the second time in less than a year that a federal court has found Google guilty of running an illegal monopoly and then stopped short of the one punishment that would have forced real change: a breakup.

A pattern of findings without teeth

The timeline tells a story that should concern anyone who believes antitrust law still has force. In August 2024, a separate federal judge ruled that Google held an illegal monopoly over online search. That case, too, ended without a breakup order. Then in April 2025, Judge Brinkema issued her own finding that Google had violated antitrust law in the advertising technology space.

Her language at the time left little room for ambiguity. As Breitbart reported, the judge wrote in her April ruling:

"Plaintiffs have proven that Google has willfully engaged in a series of anticompetitive acts to acquire and maintain monopoly power in the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets for open-web display advertising."

That finding covered two distinct markets: publisher ad servers and the ad exchange layer that connects buyers and sellers of digital display ads. Both are critical pieces of infrastructure in the online advertising ecosystem, and Google controls dominant positions in each.

Yet when it came time to fashion a remedy, the court pulled back. Instead of ordering Google to shed business units, Judge Brinkema accepted a package of behavioral changes, the details of which have not been fully disclosed. The Washington Examiner reported on the ruling as a clear win for Google against the DOJ's more aggressive posture.

Google celebrates while DOJ walks away empty-handed

Google wasted no time framing the outcome as vindication. Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company's VP of Regulatory Affairs, issued a statement that leaned hard on the small-business angle.

"We're very pleased the Court rejected the DOJ's proposal to break apart tools that help small businesses reach new customers and grow."

That framing deserves scrutiny. The DOJ did not bring this case to protect Google's relationship with small businesses. It brought the case because it believed Google had rigged the advertising marketplace in its own favor, acting as buyer, seller, and auctioneer all at once. The court agreed with that characterization of the facts. It simply chose not to impose the structural remedy that would have dismantled the arrangement.

The gap between the finding and the remedy is where the real legal story lives. Courts have broad discretion in crafting antitrust remedies, and behavioral fixes are often easier to implement than forced divestitures. But critics of behavioral remedies argue they amount to asking a monopolist to promise it will behave, with limited enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance.

Two monopoly findings, zero breakups

The broader pattern is hard to ignore. Federal courts have now found Google guilty of maintaining illegal monopolies in two separate markets across two separate cases. In both instances, judges declined to order structural relief. The search monopoly case from 2024 and the ad tech case decided this week followed remarkably similar arcs: the government proved its case on liability, then watched the remedy phase produce something far less than what it sought.

For conservatives who have long argued that Big Tech wields too much unaccountable power, the outcomes raise a pointed question. If proving an illegal monopoly twice is not enough to trigger a breakup, what would be? The courts are signaling that structural remedies remain a theoretical ceiling rather than a practical tool, even when the factual record supports them.

This dynamic matters beyond the tech sector. Federal courts regularly shape the boundaries of government power and corporate accountability through their rulings. As seen in the Supreme Court's recent landmark decision on geofence warrants, judicial outcomes in cases involving technology companies carry consequences that ripple far beyond the parties involved.

What behavioral remedies actually mean

The court's preference for behavioral remedies over a breakup places enormous weight on ongoing compliance and enforcement. In practice, behavioral remedies typically require the monopolist to change specific business practices, open access to competitors, or submit to monitoring for a set period.

The problem is execution. Google has vast legal and technical resources to interpret behavioral requirements narrowly, challenge enforcement actions, and adapt its practices in ways that comply with the letter of a court order while preserving its market dominance. The company has decades of experience navigating regulatory constraints in the United States and Europe.

A forced divestiture, by contrast, would have created a permanent structural change. Selling off the AdX exchange business would have separated Google's role as the operator of the auction from its role as a participant in that auction. The DOJ argued this separation was necessary to restore competition. The court disagreed on the remedy, not the diagnosis.

The DOJ's losing streak on structural relief

The Justice Department now faces a credible question about whether its antitrust enforcement strategy can deliver meaningful results against the largest technology companies. Winning on liability is not the same as winning on remedy. And in both Google cases, the government proved its legal theory only to see the court impose consequences that left the monopolist's core business structure untouched.

This is not a new problem. Antitrust enforcement in the technology sector has struggled for decades to keep pace with companies that grow faster than regulators can act. But the back-to-back Google outcomes sharpen the issue. If federal courts are unwilling to order breakups even after finding illegal monopolization, the deterrent effect of antitrust law weakens considerably.

For the DOJ, the path forward likely involves either appealing the remedy decision or pursuing legislative changes that would give courts clearer authority to impose structural relief. Neither option offers a quick fix.

What comes next

Investigators and regulators will need to determine whether the behavioral remedies Judge Brinkema imposed actually change Google's conduct in the ad tech markets. Authorities have not publicly confirmed the full scope of those remedies or the enforcement mechanisms attached to them. Without transparency on those details, the public has no way to judge whether the court's chosen path will produce real competition or simply ratify the status quo with a judicial stamp.

Google, for its part, will almost certainly treat this ruling as a green light. The company avoided the worst-case scenario twice in less than a year. Its stock price, its business model, and its market position remain intact. The behavioral remedies may impose some friction, but they will not alter the fundamental structure that two federal courts found to be illegally monopolistic.

Two guilty verdicts on monopoly charges and zero structural consequences. If that does not raise questions about whether antitrust enforcement still works in America, nothing will.