A U.S. judge ruled that Alphabet Inc. Class C (GOOGL.US) should relax its advertising technology rules and appoint an internal antitrust compliance monitor.

A U.S. federal judge said Alphabet Inc. Class C (GOOGL.US) should relax its online advertising auction rules and appoint an internal antitrust compliance monitor, but did not require the company to break up its advertising technology business, while explicitly requiring Alphabet Inc. Class C to negotiate with the U.S. Department of Justice to formulate a final judgment. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, issued the above opinion on Wednesday in a 106-page ruling lifting confidentiality restrictions. Brinkema said Alphabet Inc. Class C should improve certain business practices, even though she ruled in April 2025 that Alphabet Inc. Class C maintained an illegal monopoly in certain online advertising technology areas. Brinkema wrote that these remedies "will be sufficient to effectively open to competition the advertising technology markets harmed by Alphabet Inc. Class C's illegal conduct and to prevent Alphabet Inc. Class C from re-engaging in anticompetitive conduct in these markets." U.S. Deputy Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr. said in a statement that the ruling was a "major victory" for the Justice Department's efforts to "protect and restore competition." He said the Justice Department is reviewing the opinion to assess its legal options. The case stems from a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2023. In April 2025, Brinkema had already found that Alphabet Inc. Class C engaged in illegal monopolistic conduct in two markets for open-web digital advertising technology. The Justice Department subsequently proposed structural remedies, including requiring Alphabet Inc. Class C to sell its advertising exchange AdX and other businesses. AdX is Alphabet Inc. Class C's advertising exchange, used to connect advertising demand with websites and other providers of advertising inventory, and is one of the core advertising technology products involved in this case. The U.S. Department of Justice had previously argued that Alphabet Inc. Class C simultaneously controlled advertiser tools, website ad servers, and advertising exchanges, enabling it to use the connections between different products to consolidate its market position. The Justice Department accused Alphabet Inc. Class C of weakening competition by acquiring competitors, restricting advertising demand, and adjusting advertising auction mechanisms. The remedies proposed by the Justice Department in 2025 also included requiring Alphabet Inc. Class C's advertiser-side tools to treat third-party advertising technology products fairly in areas such as bidding, ad matching, and information provision, and restricting Alphabet Inc. Class C from prioritizing advertising demand toward its own advertising exchange. The relevant measures had originally been proposed to last at least 10 years. This ruling mainly addressed how to implement remedies, rather than re-determining whether Alphabet Inc. Class C constitutes a monopoly. The court ultimately did not adopt the plan requiring Alphabet Inc. Class C to sell its advertising business, but instead adopted behavioral measures requiring Alphabet Inc. Class C to change its relevant business practices. These include arrangements such as opening real-time bidding access to competitors. This ruling spared Alphabet Inc. Class C from breaking up its core advertising business a business that contributed about 73% of Alphabet Inc. Class C's revenue last year. This case is not the same as Alphabet Inc. Class C's search antitrust case. In 2024, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found that Alphabet Inc. Class C illegally maintained a monopoly in the general search and search advertising markets. In September 2025, the remedies ruling in that case did not require Alphabet Inc. Class C to sell the Chrome browser or the Android system, but prohibited it from entering into certain exclusive distribution agreements and required it to provide some search data and search advertising services to competitors.