Google Keeps AdX and Installs Rival-Sized Doors

Google began carrying out the remedy by leaving AdX where it was and adding a row of rival-sized doors to its auction system. The doors are designed to let competing ad servers send bids into the exchange without requiring Google to sell the exchange itself.

The first publisher to use one sent an ad request through a competing server, which passed it to AdX, where the auction selected a winning bid and removed Google’s 20% fee before sending the result back. The rival tool handled the request, the auction and the return trip; Google handled the part where the money disappeared.

The escape route leads to the same tollbooth

A second publisher tried to avoid the arrangement by moving its ad server to a rival and routing every impression through it. The test page displayed a blank rectangle for six hours because the rival server could read the winning bid but not the AdX receipt attached to it. Google’s compatibility layer then translated the receipt into a format the rival could understand: a second receipt confirming that the first receipt had cost 20%.

The full remedy remains sealed for 14 days while the parties redact it. Implementation teams have been working from the public summary, in which the sentence describing who may see the auction’s clearing price appears as a black bar. The connector now treats the black bar as a valid field and returns it to publishers as the price of knowing.

The ruling marks the third consecutive request by U.S. antitrust enforcers to break up a major technology company that ended with the company keeping the disputed asset and rearranging the entrances. By the end of the first test day, publishers had rival tools at every door, one exchange at the center, and a 20% receipt waiting inside each one.