A judge said Google must make its ad technology work with competing products and share more data with customers, in remedies that fell short of what the US Justice Department had demanded after Google was found last year to be operating an illegal monopoly in the ad tech sector.

Google will also need to appoint an internal antitrust compliance monitor, given the “gravity” of its violations, but the monitor will have less oversight than the Justice Department had requested.

The ruling, which was announced earlier this month and unsealed on Wednesday, is the second time Google has been handed remedies widely viewed as a slap on the wrist.

Behavioural remedies

A year ago, Judge Amit Mehta denied the Justice Department’s request to force Google to sell off its Chrome browser or Android operating system to help end Google’s search monopoly, instead ordering behavioural remedies, such as sharing search data with rivals, which Google is appealing.

Similarly, the new ruling by Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia recommends behavioural changes intended to make it easier for rivals to compete with Google.

Requested measures to break up Google’s ad tech monopoly were “neither realistic nor needed”, Brinkema wrote.

During the time needed to force Google to divest critical assets, the process could be disrupted by changes including “imminent industry disruptions caused by AI”, she wrote.

The measures “will be sufficient to effectively pry open to competition the ad tech markets that were injured by Google’s unlawful conduct, and prevent Google from reverting to anticompetitive conduct in these markets,” Brinkema wrote.

Google said on Wednesday it disagreed with Brinkema’s liability ruling on its Google Ad Manager tool and would appeal.

The ruling means that, among other changes, ad servers from companies other than Google should be able to access real-time bids from Google’s AdX ad exchange platform.