The legal chess match over Google’s advertising empire has been nudged further down the calendar. The pivotal courtroom face-off—originally set for this week—will now unfold on November 21, giving both sides a little more time to sharpen their final strikes.
Months ago, the court declared that Google sits atop not one, but two unlawful monopolies in the ad-tech universe. Now comes the harder part: deciding how to dismantle the power structure that allowed it.
At the center of the storm is AdX, Google’s high-speed digital auction house where publishers are charged a 20% toll every time ads are sold in those split-second exchanges that fire the moment a webpage loads. The government and a coalition of states want that marketplace pried out of Google’s hands entirely.
The judge will determine whether that drastic remedy is the key to reviving competition—or merely the beginning of an even larger battle over the future of online advertising.
