A website owner can depend on Google to bring readers to the front door and on Google’s ad tools to earn money once they arrive. Those are different jobs. Inside a small publishing business, they can feel like parts of the same working day: check where yesterday’s story appeared, check what its ads earned, try to understand why either number changed.
Google has an interest in helping that business succeed. It also has interests of its own at each step. The trouble begins when the company supplying the tools also sets key terms for the rival tools that work with them. Even a useful service can have conflicts its customers cannot check.
September’s developments in the federal advertising antitrust case give publishers a chance to test those terms. Publishers and Google’s rivals will need a way to find out whether Google is treating them fairly. Google should have to let customers choose tools without buying them as a package, share enough data to make its conduct open to scrutiny and accept enforcement it does not control. Those rules should preserve the ease of use that makes Google’s products useful.
One company has several interests
Consider the ad space beside an article. The publisher needs a system to decide which ad will occupy it. Advertisers need ways to buy that space. An exchange brings buyers and sellers together. These functions can work so smoothly that a site owner has little reason to think about where one ends and another begins until a fee rises, a connection fails or a rival service offers better terms.
Google takes part on several sides of this business. Combining these tools can make the machinery work smoothly. It also creates chances to benefit one part of the company through choices made in another. A site owner trying to assess those choices has a basic problem: much of what matters happens inside systems it does not run.
A bad day of revenue tells a publisher little about whether Google favored its own services. To judge that, site owners need to know how the rival services were treated:
- Can a rival exchange reach the same buyers?
- Can a publisher choose a different ad server without giving up something unrelated?
- Can someone outside Google see enough of a sale to tell whether one tool performed better or got special treatment?
Publishers should be able to get those answers from someone other than Google.
Search adds another business tie, with its own rules and problems. Google sends users to publishers while increasingly presenting answers within its own products. Its interests as a source of readers and as the place where they spend their time do not always line up. That does not make every answer harmful. A person looking for a fact may be well served by finding it right away.
Site owners still need a choice about how to take part. Google’s new controls let them exclude material from specified generative AI Search features without that choice affecting rankings or inclusion elsewhere in Search. That gives them more control over how their material is used. Taking part in one service should not mean accepting every use that benefits the company running it.
Search and ad-tech are separate cases
The law matters here because a loose accusation can obscure what a court has found. In April 2025, Judge Leonie Brinkema found that Google had unlawfully maintained monopoly power in publisher ad servers and ad exchanges for open-web display advertising, and unlawfully tied its publisher ad server to its exchange. This was a civil antitrust decision about specific markets and conduct. It was not a judgment that Google’s whole ad business was illegal, or a ruling against AI-generated search answers.
On September 16, 2026, the Justice Department described relief designed to open connections between Google’s ad systems and rivals. The measures include access involving Prebid, real-time exchange bids for competing publisher ad servers, publisher access to data and limits on favoritism in Google’s advertiser buying tools. The department also described six years of independent monitoring with a technical committee. These measures aim to change how Google does business. Whether they produce a healthier market depends on how they are put into practice.
The court declined the demanded divestiture of the AdX exchange. Final details of how the relief would work were still being worked through in September. Announced relief should not be described as years of proven competition, and an intent to appeal should not be confused with a ruling having been reversed.
The separate federal Search case has its own judgment, appeals and compliance process. Readers need to know which case is which even if they never plan to follow either docket. Each remedy must address the conduct the court found unlawful. Combining everything Google does into one large claim makes it harder to see which rule is supposed to solve which problem.
A publisher benefits from a right it can enforce and use. A vague promise that an antitrust case will somehow fix the web is much less useful.
Would separation cost publishers more
Google’s strongest objection comes from the customer’s working day. Lee-Anne Mulholland, its vice president of regulatory affairs, argued in September 2025 that breaking apart its ad tools would disrupt services publishers and advertisers rely on. Smaller businesses, she argued, would face particular costs. Google also proposed changes to help its tools work with those of rivals.
That objection deserves more than a dismissal of its source. A small publisher may have no spare employee to rebuild an ad business. A system that combines several functions can save time, reduce errors and make a complex business manageable. If a remedy forces every customer to assemble and maintain a replacement, the businesses the remedy is meant to help will pay some of the cost.
The answer has to address those costs. Publishers need tools that work together, clear guidance and a transition they can manage. They should be able to keep a service they prefer while gaining the practical ability to replace another part. Giving them separate choices need not mean every publisher spends Monday morning replacing everything.
But the ease of the current setup does not tell us whether its terms are fair. A company can offer a good product and still make it too hard to choose a rival. A customer’s choice to stay tells us more once leaving is possible on fair terms.
That is why rules that govern conduct deserve a fair test, including from people who would have preferred a forced sale. A connection may be available yet slower, harder to use or worse for business in ways customers cannot explain. Rules against unfair treatment must address those differences for publishers to benefit from an open system.
The burden should not fall on a small publisher to discover all of that through months of lost income. Nor should a rival’s complaint settle the question on its own. Both claims need evidence that an outside party can inspect.
Make fair treatment verifiable
PubMatic, a Google competitor, made a useful point in its September response to the remedies: access has to work in practice. Connections need comparable terms, bids need to arrive when they can still compete, and publishers need usable data. An interface that exists on paper is not enough. PubMatic has its own business interests, but these are specific terms against which both sides’ claims can be tested.
That gives outside monitors a specific job. They need access to the data required to judge conduct. They must also hear from those who encounter problems and help get them fixed promptly. If a review takes longer than a small publisher can absorb the loss, a right may exist without providing much protection.
There is also a reason to make the process clear beyond the companies directly involved. Site owners thinking about a switch need to know whether earlier failures were fixed. Ad buyers need to know that their money is being spent on the promised terms. A remedy whose workings are hidden asks the market to accept another form of trust.
Google has limited credibility as the judge of its own fairness when fair treatment may cost it business. Publishers can value the ease of using its tools and still need someone else to check how those tools treat rivals.
The test will come in a routine sale: a publisher offers an advertising impression, a competing service submits a bid, and somebody has to decide what happens next. The publisher should have a real choice of tools. The competitor should receive the access the rules promise. And if either suspects the arrangement was tilted, someone outside Google should be able to find out.
