A US court says Google keeps its ad exchange. The Commission said only a sale would work

A US federal judge has ruled that Google will not have to sell its advertising exchange, leaving the remedies from three American antitrust cases largely behavioural. The European Commission fined Google €2.95B last September and said only divestment of part of its services would address the same conduct.

A US federal judge has ruled that Google will not have to sell its advertising exchange. The Department of Justice won the case in 2025 and has now lost the remedy it wanted, Ars Technica reported.

The court found that Google illegally locked publishers into its exchange. It did not find the tools used by advertisers unlawful. Judge Leonie Brinkema has sealed the remedies order for 14 days.

Brussels took the same view of the conduct and a different view of the cure. The Commission fined Google €2.95B last September for self-preferencing across the adtech stack.

Its preliminary position went beyond the fine. Only the divestment by Google of part of its services would address the situation, the Commission said.

Teresa Ribera restated it in October. Google needs to propose measures that eliminate its extensive conflicts of interest in the adtech industry, she said, and a structural remedy seems to be needed.

Google had 60 days to answer. What it offered was behavioural.

The proposal lets publishers set different minimum prices for different bidders in Google Ad Manager, alongside more interoperability between tools. It contains no divestment.

The Commission is still assessing that offer. No decision has been announced.

So the same conduct now sits at two points on one scale. One jurisdiction has closed its remedy phase without a sale, and the other has said in writing that a sale may be what it takes to reshape digital advertising.

The Play Store case ran the same way. Google lost to Epic, kept control of app vetting, and the remedies stop at the US border.

Europe never needed that case. Alternative app stores and alternative payments are Digital Markets Act obligations, and Google has already taken an €890M DMA penalty.

Three American judgments have now landed with Google’s market power broadly intact. The regime it operates under in Europe was never waiting on any of them, having applied since March 2024.

The next fight is already staked out. The Commission has moved to open Android to rival AI assistants and search data, which is the ground the American cases have just left Google free to build on.