The Justice Department has spent years attempting to break up Google’s gargantuan advertising business across two separate antitrust lawsuits: one filed in 2020 focused on Google’s dominance in search, and a second filed in 2023 that specifically targeted Google’s ad-technology business. Both cases argued that the search giant’s grip on the digital ad economy represents an illegal monopoly.
Courts have largely sided with the government in both cases. In 2024, a court determined that Google’s search business, including its exceedingly lucrative search-ad operation, was an illegal monopoly, claiming that the tech giant had “exercised its monopoly power” to dominate the search industry and search ads. Last April, a second court case — this one focused specifically on Google’s ad-tech business — also came to the same conclusion.
Following the 2024 ruling, Justice Department officials suggested a variety of ways Google’s search business could be broken up, including divesting its Chrome browser and Android operating system. But in September 2025, the judge overseeing that case, Amit Mehta, rejected those divestiture requests, ruling that Google could keep both Chrome and Android. He did order the company to end exclusive default-placement deals and share certain search data with competitors (remedies that Google is currently appealing).
