A federal judge ruled last month that Google will not be forced to break up its adtech stack, despite finding that the company operated illegal monopolies in the ad exchange and publisher ad server markets.

The ruling landed as a series of small corrective orders rather than a structural breakup. Google must connect its ad exchange AdX and its publisher ad server DFP to Prebid, playing by the same rules as everyone else. AdX bids to alternative publisher ad servers must offer the same terms as they would to DFP. The orders also limit self-preferencing across the stack and require Google to share data on ad auction wins and losses with publishers.

In short, Google's adtech business walks away largely unscathed. The decision follows a separate antitrust case in which another federal judge ruled Google's search business an illegal monopoly yet imposed little more than a wrist slap.

One adland heavyweight may feel the outcome more keenly than most: The Trade Desk.

Built as the anti-Google

The largest independent demand-side platform built its entire business and go-to-market strategy as the alternative to Google. When it debuted on the Nasdaq a decade ago, its proposition was simple: neutral technology could give ad buyers a better version of what the closed, vertically integrated ecosystems of the tech giants offered.

In 2018, the company launched Unified ID, or UID, an identity resolution tool designed to establish a free, shared industry ID — and, per CEO Jeff Green, "to make sure certain players, particularly Google, didn't have an unfair cookie coverage advantage over the rest of the internet." Within two years, UID was reportedly the most ubiquitous ID in bid requests across the open web.

When Google announced plans in 2020 to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome, The Trade Desk's position strengthened. The open-source second iteration, UID 2.0, dropped cookies entirely and translated login data such as email addresses or phone numbers into pseudonymized alphanumeric tokens. Green pitched it as a rival to Google's own proposed post-cookie tools, which he attacked in a January 2024 diatribe: "All those brilliant minds inside of a nearly $2 trillion company couldn't do better than this?"

Then Google reversed course. After years of postponing its cookie-cutting date, the company ultimately decided to keep cookies in Chrome, stifling momentum around alternative ID solutions including UID and UID 2.0. Advertisers today operate in a multi-ID world where cookies, various APIs, and token-based systems like UID 2.0 coexist — but the collective push toward cookie replacements has petered out.

OpenPath's problem

The Trade Desk's other major strategic play came in 2022 with OpenPath, which leapfrogs supply-side platforms and lets advertisers transact directly with publishers. The pitch: a shorter supply path cuts unnecessary fees, reduces latency, and improves transparency. The Trade Desk launched it alongside its exit from Google's Open Bidding, citing the "opaque and harmful privileges of the walled gardens."

For publishers, OpenPath offered a way to get paid without going through Google or the SSPs — a product most valuable, at least theoretically, in an ecosystem where publishers want an alternative to Google. The court-ordered remedies may now dilute that pitch. Google must make sure AdX bids through Prebid on the same terms it offers to DFP, and must show publishers those bids. In a theoretically fairer and more transparent auction, OpenPath's value proposition as the honest counterweight loses some of its punch.

Both The Trade Desk and Google declined requests for comment from ADWEEK.

Green's prediction, still pending

The DSP's bigger prediction was a total Google withdrawal from the open web. Amid the DOJ battles last year, Green told Axios: "I do think you can expect Google to exit the open internet at some point, simply because, strategically, it's good for them. It's where all their privacy and antitrust risks come from, but it's not where all the money comes from."

Twenty-one months later, that reality has yet to materialize. Federal courts declined to force a breakup of Google's adtech or search businesses in the DOJ's two antitrust cases, and the walls on the garden have arguably grown higher.

Green's call could still pan out. Google admitted in a court filing last year that "the open web is already in rapid decline," referring specifically to open-web display advertising, and its business continues shifting away from open web browsing as it transforms core search into an AI answer engine.

Meanwhile, The Trade Desk has broadened its narrative beyond Google and the open web, investing heavily in connected TV and agentic advertising. In its play against Google, the industry may still be in early innings.