“Google got sued for manipulating PPC prices” – sort of…

Recently, the Big G (Google) lost a major US antitrust case over its advertising business. Actually, it lost 2 cases!

Case One: The Ad Tech Stack

In January 2023, the DOJ (the US Government’s Department of Justice) and a group of states sued Google over its control of the plumbing that sits between advertisers and publishers, ie, the ad server, the exchange, the auction. In April 2025, a US federal judge ruled Google had illegally monopolised key parts of that tech stack. On 2 September 2026, a week ago, the same judge ruled on remedies.

Google won’t be forced to sell its ad exchange (AdX), but it does have to change how it operates: no more seeing rival bids before submitting its own (“last look”), no more guaranteed first access to publisher inventory (“first look”) and publishers get back the right to set different price floors for different buyers instead of one blanket rule.

I offer a deeper dive on how this affects media buying rather than your standard Google Ads bidding in our next blog.

Case Two: Search

A separate case found Google illegally maintained its monopoly in search and search advertising. The remedies, decided a year earlier in September 2025, left Chrome alone but required Google to share search data with “qualified competitors” and (this is the part PPC people should actually care about) publicly disclose material changes to its ad auction processes going forward.

Nobody is cutting you a cheque

Both rulings are about market structure; who controls the exchange, who sees what, who gets to compete for publisher inventory. They are not a finding that Google individually inflated your cost-per-click. Nobody’s cutting advertisers a refund cheque.

But both rulings found that Google rigged the plumbing in its own favour for the better part of a decade. And the new transparency requirement – having to disclose material auction changes – is the first real crack in a system that’s been a black box to everyone running campaigns in it.

The outcome? A bit more visibility…

If you manage Google Ads: don’t expect cheaper clicks next quarter. Do expect more visibility over time into how the auction actually works, and a slightly more contestable ad tech market as these remedies bite. That’s worth watching, even if the DOJ didn’t get the breakup it wanted.

Genuinely one of the more consequential tech antitrust outcomes in years – just not the breakup of the Big G people were suggesting when the lawsuits got underway..

Sources: rulings from Judge Leonie Brinkema (E.D. Va., ad tech case) and Judge Amit Mehta (D.D.C., search case), plus reporting from CNBC, AdExchanger and Tech Times on the 2 September 2026 remedies decision.