US turns the screws on Google

The US justice department has asked a federal judge to force Google to sell key parts of its advertising technology and share real-time data with competitors to address a ruling that the technology giant illegally monopolises much of the market for placing ads around the web.

The DoJ made the request in a US court on Friday during a trial involving Google’s advertising operations. The government is also in trial against the company in a separate case in Washington focused on Google’s dominance in search.

US district judge Leonie Brinkema set a 22 September date to hear proposals to address competitive harm she found in Google’s advertising business.

Google lawyer Karen Dunn said the company supported behavioral remedies — such as making real-time bids available to competitors — but that prosecutors cannot legally pursue a bid to force Google to sell parts of its business.

Such a move would also harm internet users and encounter a lack of interested buyers, she said.

Publisher ad servers are platforms used by websites to store and manage their digital ad inventory. Along with ad exchanges, the technology lets news publishers and other online content providers make money by selling ads.

Hurt publishers

Brinkema ruled in April that Google unlawfully tied publishers’ use of its ad exchange to use of its ad server, and enacted anticompetitive policies that were “not in its publisher customers’ best interests”. The conduct harmed competition, and hurt publishers and ultimately internet users, she said.

Read: OpenAI: We’d buy Chrome if Google was forced to sell

Google has previously explored selling its ad exchange to appease European antitrust regulators, Reuters reported in September.  — David Shepardson and Jody Godoy, (c) 2025 Reuters, and Sabrina Willmer and Josh Sisco, (c) 2025 Bloomberg LP

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