The interesting thing about this ruling is not that Google lost. It is what losing turned out to mean: not a break-up, not a number, but a list of things Google's software now has to do, and somebody sitting in the room for six years to check that it does them.
What DOJ says the court ordered
The case is United States et al. v. Google LLC in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. DOJ describes the outcome as "significant behavioral relief, including requiring close integration between Google's products and products offered by rivals, including the open-source solutions offered by Prebid."
Four items, in DOJ's own headings:
1. Required integrations with Prebid and competing publisher ad servers. "Google must create and support integrations between AdX and Prebid, and DFP and Prebid." Prebid, DOJ notes, "is an open-source industry standard for real-time bidding." Beyond that, "AdX will be required to submit real-time bids to other publisher ad servers."
The point of that, in DOJ's framing, is the tie: "breaking Google's unlawful tie between AdX and DFP," so that publishers get "access to important, unique demand without publishers being forced to use both DFP and AdX."
2. Data sharing. "Google will be required to allow publishers to access and export their own data from DFP and AdX, which will make it easier for publishers to switch ad tech providers."
Read that twice. The remedy for a publisher being stuck is the publisher being handed its own numbers.
3. AdWords must bid in a non-discriminatory fashion. DOJ says the court "rejected Google's arguments that remedies could not touch AdWords, Google's 'golden goose,' and ordered that AdWords cannot bid preferentially into AdX or other Google ad tech tools because of Google's ownership of those tools. AdWords also cannot bid directly into DFP."
4. A monitor. "A monitor will be put in place to facilitate enforcement of Google's compliance with the Final Judgment. Google will be subject to the oversight of this monitor and a technical committee for six years, the length of the Final Judgment."
The part that happened before the ruling
DOJ's release records something worth separating out from the court's order: concessions Google made on its own, during and after the remedies trial.
As a direct result of the work of the Department's trial team, Google's executives repeatedly offered new pledges of injunctive relief while on the stand during the remedies trial. This extended after the trial, when Google offered a further-revised proposed final judgment with additional concessions.
Among them, per DOJ: that AdWords "would not engage in discriminatory bidding to the detriment of both advertisers and publishers," and that Google would "broaden the categories of advertising inventory covered by the final judgment, disclose how its black-box advertising auctions work, and provide new technical support and data to its competitors and customers."
That is a defendant negotiating in public, on the record, while the remedy is being written. It is also the reason a reader cannot cleanly separate "what the court imposed" from "what Google offered" — DOJ's account runs them together, and this record does not pretend otherwise.
What the ruling settles about remedies generally
DOJ says the court "rejected Google's argument that the termination of monopolies is not a proper objective for monopolization cases," and that it "confirmed the Department's position that it is not enough to order Google to cease its prior anticompetitive behavior."
And a line with reach beyond this case: the ruling "reiterates that remedies can include conditions on products beyond the monopolized product markets" — which is what allows an order about a publisher ad server to reach the advertiser tool.
What is not settled
DOJ's own last paragraph: "The Department continues to review the court's opinion and will determine appropriate next steps to ensure that competition is restored to these markets that Google has unlawfully dominated for far too long." The Associate Attorney General's statement says the same thing in fewer words — "We will continue to review the opinion to consider the Department's options."
A party that won and is still weighing options is a party that did not get everything it asked for. What it did not get, and whether either side appeals, is not in this release, and this record will not guess.
What a reader can check
The Final Judgment runs six years. That is a date — six years from entry — and the kind of date that goes unremarked until it lapses. The compliance obligations above are checkable in public as they land: whether AdX–Prebid and DFP–Prebid integrations exist, whether a publisher can in fact export its own DFP and AdX data, and whether a monitor and technical committee are named.