As Google's ad tech case nears its end, the antitrust fight moves to AI

Google lost twice to the U.S. Department of Justice in 12 months and was ruled a monopolist in both search and ad tech, yet avoided forced divestiture of Chrome and its ad exchange and ad server both times, with judges opting for behavioral remedies. Final remedies in the ad tech case are expected in the coming days. The fight now shifts to AI-era products: Alan Chapell, a privacy attorney who co-hosts The Monopoly Report, said the DOJ's proposed structural remedy was simply too complex. James Rosewell, co-founder of pressure group Movement for an Open Web, argues Google's AI Commerce platform is the next target: "Google has the ability to leverage its existing dominance in a whole range of areas from payments and email through to search and browsers, in order to monopolize agentic commerce." Robert Webster of TAU Marketing Solutions calls Google's automatic upgrading of Search campaigns into AI Max a case of "Google upping the Google Tax," adding: "It's making the controls less visible to most advertisers and most buyers."

The crux

Google escaped structural breakup twice and the remedies being finalized are behavioral, so the real antitrust frontier is moving to AI-era products like AI Max and agentic commerce, where Google can rebuild dominance faster than regulators can write rules.

Sell-side read

Behavioral remedies leave Google's AdX and Ad Manager stack intact, but the telegraphed terms - real-time auction data sharing and a Prebid integration that puts rival exchanges on equal footing - are concrete yield levers publishers should push to see actually enforced.

Watch

the unsealed remedy specifics on 16 Sep and whether Google complies in letter but not spirit, frustrating intent by making integrations harder or data poorer.