The story. Google has now lost two major U.S. antitrust cases inside 12 months — ruled a monopolist in both general search and ad tech — and in both, judges chose behavioral remedies over a forced breakup. Chrome stayed with Google; so did its ad exchange and ad server. With the structural fight largely settled, regulators on both sides of the Atlantic are turning the same scrutiny toward where Google is expanding fastest: AI-driven advertising and connected TV.
01What happened
- Two losses, no breakup. Google was found to be a monopolist in both search and ad tech in separate U.S. cases within the same year. In each, judges opted for behavioral remedies — conduct restrictions — rather than divesting Chrome, Google Ad Manager, or AdX. (Digiday, 14 September 2026)
- The record that got there. The ad tech case surfaced internal Google initiatives — including one nicknamed “Red State,” aimed at suppressing rival exchanges’ bid prices, and “Jedi Blue,” a quid pro quo arrangement giving Meta preferential auction treatment — that shaped the monopolization finding even though the remedy stopped short of a breakup.
- The next products in the room. Google’s AI Max advertising product has expanded from search into shopping and travel; Performance Max already spans search, YouTube, display and shopping in a single campaign. Both sit on top of the same auction infrastructure the court just examined, only extended into AI-driven bidding and connected TV.
- Two regulators, two angles. The European Commission is pursuing a separate competition case targeting Google’s sell-side ad tech stack. In the U.K., the competition authority has proposed conduct requirements that would include an opt-out for AI Overviews — a direct response to publisher complaints about traffic loss.
02What it means inside a GAM network
Google’s ad tech antitrust resolution leaves AI-driven ad platforms and CTV programmatic as the next regulatory targets — what remedies or structural changes publishers and buyers should prepare for.
Behavioral remedies mean Google keeps operating GAM, AdX and its ad exchange under conduct rules rather than under new ownership — so for an operator running MCM inventory today, nothing about your existing stack changes overnight. What changes is where the regulatory attention goes next: AI Max, Performance Max and CTV auctions are growing precisely because they weren’t the subject of the finding. Privacy attorney Alan Chapell’s read — “I don’t see anything coming from the current administration” on near-term U.S. enforcement — points the real pressure toward Brussels and London, where the EC’s sell-side case and the U.K.’s AI Overviews opt-out proposal are both live and both bite publisher-side products directly.
The structural fight over Google's ad tech dominance is largely over, and Google kept the pieces — Chrome, GAM, AdX — that regulators worried about breaking apart.
03What publishers should do about it
04Offer tie-in
Publishers weighing how much of their CTV inventory sits behind auction mechanics regulators are actively scrutinizing should have a clear read on their own yield exposure before the next remedy round — that’s the audit APH runs as part of CTV monetization engagements.
05The bottom line
The structural fight over Google’s ad tech dominance is largely over, and Google kept the pieces — Chrome, GAM, AdX — that regulators worried about breaking apart. The fight isn’t over, though; it moved. AI-driven ad products and CTV programmatic are growing in the space behavioral remedies left open, and Brussels and London are already pointed at exactly that growth. For publishers and buyers, the antitrust story to track for the rest of 2026 isn’t the case that just ended — it’s the EC sell-side case and the U.K.’s AI Overviews opt-out proposal, both of which reach further into daily ad-ops decisions than the U.S. rulings did.