From afar, it appears to be like like Google had a tough yr.
It was discovered responsible of working an unlawful search monopoly and a writer advert tech monopoly, to not point out getting hit with a raft of civil antitrust fits introduced by advert tech
However zoom in a bit and it turns into clear that the previous yr went about in addition to Google may have hoped for.
The yr that wasn’t
2025 was meant to be the yr when, in the end, antitrust regulators would rating significant victories towards Google.
“Significant” is the operative phrase. There have been loads of fines – and even fairly heavy ones in Europe – however no compelled divestitures or main enterprise adjustments to forestall anticompetitive habits shifting ahead, at the least not but.
Choose Amit Mehta’s September resolution within the DOJ’s Google Search monopoly case “represents maybe the best-possible final result for the corporate,” in accordance with Alan Chapell, a lawyer who works as exterior counsel and privateness officer for promoting and mar tech firms, in a analysis report final month.
Mehta dominated that Google should share some search knowledge with “certified opponents,” however required no divestiture or main adjustments to Google Search practices.
Though, to be truthful, a compelled divestiture of Chrome – which the DOJ had been pushing for – was by no means a possible final result.
There’s extra hope for divestiture within the writer advert tech case, the place the DOJ is advocating for forcing Google to promote AdX, its writer advert alternate, and, probably, DFP, its advert server, each now housed inside Google Advert Supervisor (GAM).
It could be a crying disgrace if the DOJ’s case towards Google’s third-party sell-side advert tech likewise ends in primarily no setbacks for the corporate, Chapell writes.
As he places it: “If divestiture fails right here – in a case the place Google systematically dismantled two advert tech markets and maintained a 20% take charge it admitted it had no plans to cut back – then when precisely does structural separation develop into applicable?”
Chapell’s reply to that non-rhetorical query is “tequila.” (As in, pour me a shot to drown my sorrows.)
And a drink would possibly simply be crucial. The prevailing sentiment amongst observers of the treatment part of the DOJ v. Google advert tech trial is pessimism. Which is to say, they principally don’t imagine the DOJ has persuaded District Court docket Choose Leonie Brinkema to require a divestiture or impose extreme behavioral adjustments.
Earlier than the treatments part began, Ari Paparo, CEO of Marketecture Media and somebody who’s adopted the case for the reason that starting, initially instructed AdExchanger that he noticed roughly even odds of a court-ordered divestiture and that he’d guess on it occurring. However by the tip of the treatments part, after Choose Brinkema uncovered her viewpoint by her line of questioning, Paparo mentioned he’d flipped to doubting a divestiture – at the least one mandated by the court docket.
European regulators, in the meantime, are in a holding sample with their very own parallel advert tech antitrust case towards Google till Choose Brinkema publishes her resolution, which may come anytime within the subsequent few months.
What of 2026?
In brief, 2025 was a little bit of a dud, at the least by way of taking Google down a peg and empowering its opponents. However possibly 2026 is the yr we’ve been ready for?
Don’t maintain your breath.
The likelihood stays that Choose Brinkema may order a divestiture of AdX. That curveball would imply a complete cascade of potentialities, together with a return to a model of a “what-if universe,” which is the antitrust time period for a hypothetical model of actuality by which the aggressive hurt at situation by no means occurred. On this case, what if publishers may decouple the Google advert alternate from its advert server, thus permitting exterior SSPs and non-Google demand sources to compete on comparatively even phrases?
The “but-for world” got here up continuously as Choose Brinkema tried to know the potential results on writer advert revenues if she have been to require a divestiture.
For Chapell, that concentrate on hypothetical futures solely additional highlights that these years-long antitrust sagas have “generated warmth however little mild.” Which means that, whereas regulators have extracted fines and received responsible verdicts, they haven’t efficiently positioned any restraints on Huge Tech targets.
Simply final month, for instance, the FTC’s five-year-long effort to power Meta to divest Instagram and/or WhatsApp got here to an unsuccessful finish.
“The one certainty is that December 2025 won’t be remembered because the month regulators lastly discovered the right way to constrain Huge Tech,” Chapell writes. “It could be remembered because the month the restrictions of present frameworks turned inconceivable to disregard.”
The positive factors
However even supposing the very largest tech platforms proceed gaining floor and dodging hits, there are nonetheless causes to worth these antitrust fits, together with those that finish in modest, behavioral-only punishments as a substitute of breakups.
For instance, final month, Google quietly started rolling out adjustments to its writer advert stack in Europe to proactively take away an anticompetitive product known as Unified Pricing Guidelines (UPR). Now, European publishers can set bid flooring for sure channels. (Google beforehand didn’t approve of this follow as a result of publishers would normally require increased bid flooring for Google’s advert tech.)
Within the US, a partial finish to UPR is probably going as a part of a behavioral treatment within the DOJ advert tech case. Google provided that itself. Nonetheless, the change would solely apply to open-web show promoting, a quarantined portion of programmatic that features solely the least fascinating stock.
In Europe, by comparability, UPR is gone altogether, and Google’s different behavioral concessions additionally apply to video and in-app stock as properly.
The UPR information out of Europe ought to spur American publishers to insist upon the identical requirements.
These sorts of tweaks could appear trivial to a Huge Tech large, like clipping their fingernail slightly than shedding a finger. Nevertheless it nonetheless issues to the cell economic system. As an example, cell sport builders stand to earn an additional $4 billion yearly shifting ahead – and as much as $20 billion over the following few years – now that Apple can not cease them from signing customers up straight by their websites, thus avoiding Apple’s compelled commissions.
“These guys are going to earn more money as a result of Apple’s going make much less, greenback for greenback,” Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, instructed Bloomberg earlier this yr.
Bringing it again to advert tech, would possibly publishers and advert tech firms profit, too, since even crumbs that fall from Google’s desk can rely as a feast for an indie SSP?
A divestiture would doubtless drag on for years, so open-web fixes are arguably extra related within the close to time period than a distant breakup.
However that argument “requires one to imagine that publishers are higher off with half a loaf at this time versus nothing,” Chapell writes.
And, sadly on this case, “I’m unsure that the behavioral treatments being mentioned will supply even half a loaf to publishers,” he added.
