Topic
Court-designed relief after monopolisation findings, and the choice between structural divestiture and behavioral conduct rules.
The court rejected all three structural remedies the Justice Department asked for and accepted most of the behavioral ones. The opinion saying which ones is sealed, so nobody yet knows what Google must actually do.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishersReality
The unsealed 106-page opinion keeps Google's exchange intact but ends the rule that DFP publishers route through it, and it sets six years of outside oversight whose scope the reporting still disagrees on.
Reality
A federal judge's unsealed remedies ruling lets Google keep its ad server, its exchange and its buying tools, while barring the auction mechanics that put its own exchange ahead of rivals for six years.
Reality
Judge Leonie Brinkema refused to order a sale of AdX and instead bound Google to six years of interoperability terms and an internal compliance monitor, over a unit the New York Times puts at about $30 billion a year.
Reality
A lawyer who advises on merger filings writes that overlap from repeated bolt-ons builds faster than deal teams price it, and that a remedy can force the sale of an asset sitting in another of the sponsor's funds.
Reality
The court ended first look, last look and mandatory uniform floors, but Google still owns both the ad server publishers depend on and the exchange it feeds, which makes AdX's decade-old 20% take rate the test.
Reality
Judge Brinkema found Google's display ad business an illegal monopoly in April, then declined to order the AdX sale the Justice Department asked for, so the people who run ad stacks get amended rules on a product Google already folded away.
Reality
Having found an illegal monopoly last April, Judge Brinkema has accepted modified behavioral remedies rather than the AdX sale the Justice Department asked for, so publishers keep planning around one integrated Google Ad Manager.
Reality