Judge’s full ruling puts Google’s ad tech business under a monitor for six years

Google must open its ad auctions to rivals and accept years of outside oversight, according to the full decision in the US government’s ad tech case, unsealed on Wednesday.

US District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled on 2 September that Google would not have to sell its AdX ad exchange, and gave both sides two weeks to ask for confidential material to be redacted from her written opinion.

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 in the 106-page decision.

The changes will last six years, the term Google proposed, instead of the 15 years sought by the Justice Department and the states that joined the case. Courthouse News reported the court can extend the period if the judgment has not achieved its goal.

Accounts differ on how the oversight will work. Reuters reported Google should appoint an internal antitrust compliance monitor.

AdExchanger described a court-appointed technical monitor with full access to Google’s staff, systems, and source code. Courthouse News said both sides proposed a monitor and a technical committee.

The core of the order breaks the link between Google’s two main publisher tools. Websites using its DFP ad server will no longer have to use AdX. AdX must bid into rival publisher ad servers on the same terms it offers DFP, according to AdExchanger.

Google must also connect AdX and DFP to Prebid, the open-source header-bidding framework publishers adopted to get competing bids outside Google’s control.

It must share real-time data on winning and losing bids with publishers and publish documentation explaining how DFP picks auction winners.

Brinkema rejected a demand to open-source DFP’s auction code and the government’s bid to force a sale of AdX, where publishers pay a 20% fee.

The rules apply worldwide. Brinkema rejected Google’s argument that they should be limited to the US.

“For Google, a worldwide application of the final judgment would entail product changes that are consistent across all regions,” she wrote.

AdExchanger reported the requirements take effect within 60 days.

The opinion also shows the judge’s wariness. Brinkema referred to a “lack of trust that Google will comply with an order from this court,” Courthouse News reported, even as she chose behavioral remedies over a breakup.

Not everyone accepts that choice. Barry Lynn of the Open Markets Institute called the decision “more proof the U.S. judiciary is abdicating its congressionally mandated duty to apply antitrust laws,” according to Courthouse News.

In Europe, the Commission had argued that only a breakup would fix Google’s ad tech business.