On 2 September, Judge Leonie Brinkema disposed of the remedies phase of the Justice Department's ad-tech monopolisation case against Google. Filed on the public docket as Document 1857 in Case 1:23-cv-108 (LMB/JFA) in the Eastern District of Virginia, the order rejects every structural remedy the government asked for. It also, as one account of it put it, does not explain itself.
What was rejected
Three structural remedies, all refused: divestiture of AdX, Google's ad exchange; open-sourcing the final auction logic of DFP, its publisher ad server; and the contingent divestiture of the "DFP Remainder." Structural relief in the Virginia case is finished. The behavioural remedies were accepted as modified by the court.
What is not public
The order does not list which behavioural remedies survived, or what the court's modifications were. Those are in an accompanying Memorandum Opinion filed under seal, readable only inside chambers and by counsel of record. The parties have a short window to request redactions, after which the opinion is expected to unseal; a proposed final judgment is due within roughly 30 days.
What the common framing gets wrong
Every article describing what Google must now do is describing a document that has not been read by its author. The public order enumerates no obligations. The bullet lists circulating this week are drawn from the parties' own remedy proposals filed in 2025 — what the DOJ asked for and what Google offered — not from what the court ordered. Until the Memorandum Opinion unseals, the accurate statement is that the structural case failed and the behavioural relief is unknown in its particulars. Two further corrections: the April 2025 liability finding is untouched by this order, and this is not a final judgment — that document does not exist yet.
Why the sealing matters beyond this case
Publishers, ad-tech competitors and every party contemplating a follow-on claim need the reasoning, not the result. Whether Brinkema rejected divestiture because it was disproportionate, because behavioural relief was adequate, or because the remedy record was thin determines what the next case looks like. That answer exists, and is sealed.