Judge Brinkema Ponders Forced Sale of Google’s AdX After Final Court Showdown

Calls to break up dominant platforms echo 1911’s Standard Oil split and 1984’s AT&T divestiture—moments when regulators concluded that vertical integration stifled market evolution. Unlike those commodities or telecom networks, today’s dispute revolves around data flows and matching algorithms, assets whose value depreciates quickly and can be re-assembled through acquisitions. The case sits at the junction of three longer arcs: (1) a post-1970s antitrust philosophy that tolerated ‘efficient’ concentration now facing a neo-Brandeisian counter-movement; (2) the digitization of advertising, which has migrated from newspapers (~40 % of U.S. ad spend in 2000) to programmatic exchanges dominated by two firms; and (3) the judiciary’s growing skepticism of structural remedies after the mixed results of the 2001 Microsoft consent decree. Whether Brinkema orders a behavioral Band-Aid or the first Big-Tech break-up of the internet era, the decision will shape how code, data and AI models are treated as essential infrastructure over the next century, much as railroad tracks and copper wires were before.