Google Found Guilty of Advertising Monopoly -- How Far Will Digital Power Be Permitted: On April 17, 2025, the US Virginia federal district court ruled that Google engaged in illegal monopoly behavior in the online advertising technology market. This ruling resulted from an antitrust lawsuit jointly filed by the US Department of Justice and 17 state governments. The court core finding: Google illegally tied its publisher ad server (Google Ad Manager) with its own ad exchange (Google AdX), forcing publishers who wanted to use the dominant ad server to also use the Google ad exchange; this tying arrangement prevented competing ad exchanges from gaining the scale needed to compete effectively; the combination of Google publisher tools, advertiser tools, and the exchange connecting them created a closed system where Google could extract excess fees that a competitive market would not support. The structural remedy discussion: the DOJ is pursuing actual breakup of Google advertising technology business -- requiring Google to divest either the publisher ad server or the ad exchange; this would be the most significant forced tech divestiture since the AT&T breakup; Google is appealing, arguing the tying was beneficial to publishers and advertisers. The broader platform power question: the verdict establishes that controlling both sides of a marketplace plus the platform connecting them is illegal when it excludes competitors; this principle has implications for Amazon marketplace, Apple App Store, and other platform businesses where the platform operator also competes in the market the platform serves.