Judge Leonie Brinkema declined to order Google to divest parts of its advertising business, leaving the European Commission the only regulator still arguing that a breakup is the fix. A year after its €2.95bn fine, the Commission is still assessing a compliance plan Google filed in November 2025, and the complainants who brought the case privately say they no longer expect a divestiture.
Judge Leonie Brinkema rejected the US Department of Justice’s request to force Google to sell parts of its advertising business on Wednesday, in the remedies phase of the case where she had already found the company liable in April 2025. Jacob Parry reported for Politico that the decision leaves the European Commission isolated in pressing for a structural remedy.
The Commission fined Google €2.95bn a year ago for monopolising digital advertising and said at the time that divestment appeared to be the only way to resolve the conflict of interest. Brinkema, reviewing the same conduct, concluded a structural divestment was not necessary to remedy the liability she had found.
Why one market cannot sell half a company
The obstacle is mechanical before it is political. Google’s buying tools, its selling tools and the exchange sitting between them operate as a single global system, so an order issued in Brussels would apply on one side of the Atlantic to a business whose largest advertisers and publishers do not stop at the EU border.
