The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has proposed that Google divest two of its major advertising products—AdX and DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP)—in a bid to restore competition in the digital advertising industry. The proposal follows a court ruling last month that found Google guilty of willfully maintaining monopoly power in the ad tech market.
According to the DOJ’s latest filing, Google should sell its ad exchange platform AdX and begin a phased divestiture of DFP, its ad server for publishers. The department also recommends barring Google from operating an ad exchange for a decade after the AdX sale.
The DOJ claims that Google “ensured that publishers would lose significant revenue if they did not use AdX,” and that the company reinforced its monopoly by tightly integrating AdX with DFP, compelling publishers to adopt Google’s ecosystem.
In addition to the divestitures, the DOJ is pushing for Google to open its advertising tools—such as AdWords—to third-party platforms on non-discriminatory terms. This includes equal access in areas like ad bidding, placement, and data sharing, unless otherwise directed by the advertiser.“These remedies—including the breakup of Google’s illegally maintained monopolies—are necessary to restore fair competition and prevent future violations,” the DOJ stated.
Google pushed back strongly. Lee-Anne Mulholland, VP of Regulatory Affairs, argued that the DOJ’s proposals would damage both advertisers and publishers. “The DOJ acknowledged that Google’s proposed solution addresses the court’s findings on liability,” she said, “but their demand to break up our ad tech tools exceeds the court’s ruling, lacks legal basis, and would hurt the industry.”
Google’s own counterproposal includes making AdX real-time bidding accessible to third-party ad servers and implementing oversight by an independent compliance monitor for three years.This legal battle is part of a broader antitrust campaign against Google. In another case, the DOJ has also called for Google to divest its Chrome browser following a separate ruling that the company holds monopoly power in the search engine market.
