The spaghetti defense: Google’s vice president of security, Heather Adkins, described its systems as a “bowl of spaghetti,” citing quantum encryption and undersea cables to argue that dismantling things would be too difficult.

The breakup that wasn’t supposed to be possible: Publicly, Google has argued that it would be virtually impossible to break its ad tech stack. Privately, we’re figuring out how to do exactly that. Internal documents during the trial revealed that for years Google had been testing how a separation could work. “Project Sunday,” launched in 2020 and revisited in 2021, explored how to divide key components of its advertising technology stack within its own infrastructure. Then came “Project Monday” in 2023 – a more radical scenario that explored a scenario of shutting down parts of the advertising business. The bottom line: Breaking up AdX and imposing a fairer, more transparent market is not only possible, it’s something Google has mapped out in detail.

And it wasn’t just an internal thought experiment: Google has instructed investment banking firm Lazard to consider selling AdX in 2020.

Yet none of this introspection translated into generosity: Give one to publishers who are still hoping for a better deal from Google-owned ad tech. Its vice president and general manager, Tim Craycroft, made it clear during his testimony: Google has no plans to reduce Adx’s 20% acceptance rate. This reduction, long a point of contention among publishers, is non-negotiable – at least under Google’s ownership.

Potential bidders are already circling: Not one, but two advertising executives have admitted that they would be interested in salvaging pieces of Google’s ad tech stack if it were split up. Andrew Casale, CEO of Index Exchange, said he recently discussed the Ad Exchange acquisition with the DOJ. James Avery, CEO of retail media player Kevel, went further, testifying that he would consider buying both the exchange and the ad server if they were on the market – or either alone.

Retail players are not sitting idly by: Speaking of Kevel, Avery said his company is building its own exchange. Retail Media FTW.

The contrarian view: Maybe the industry doesn’t need AdX at all. That’s the view of Jay Friedman, former CEO of Goodway Group and now a strategic advisor, who said the divestiture of the stock market is irrelevant. Outside of Google, it’s just another advertising exchange in an already oversaturated market. Worse yet, depending on who buys it, it could create more headaches than it solves.

Stockholm syndrome for ad tech: WikiHow CEO Elizabeth Douglas, a Google witness, essentially said that she trusts Google more than other SSPs and doesn’t dwell on its revenue share.

Advertisers want Google broken up: Despite all the silence from advertisers around the trial, the frustration is there. Luke Lambert, head of reputation and insights at Omnicom Confluence, said advertisers are demanding answers about what’s really happening in programmatic bidding. The problem: he can’t tell them. Bidding is a black box and the system is too complex to trace every potential adjustment that could work in Google’s favor. This is why, Lambert says, behavioral remedies are not enough. As long as Google controls the pipes, it controls the margins. Divestiture, he said, is the only option that can change that.

….on the theme of transparency: It turns out that AdX membership prices are no longer described in the Omnicom contract. Ten years ago they were; today, not only have they disappeared, but they are no longer even negotiable. This puts Google’s exchange out of reach of the holding company’s SPO efforts to consolidate ad dollars in the most efficient programmatic markets.

The receipts are in: The Trade Desk’s chief revenue officer, Jed Dederick, called names on the markups disclosed by supply-side platforms. PubMatic, Magnite and Index Exchange were all named in his deposition, which was read back to him during the trial.

*thinking face emoji*: Several Google witnesses testified throughout the trial that the company does not use its first-party data to target ads to open web display inventory.

Even the open source remedy sparked drama: Google wanted the IAB Tech Lab to host the code that describes how its ad server handles which ads and where it serves them, while a Prebid.org witness insisted it was the only one with the chops.

The mystery bug: PubMatic told the court that for eight months a technical glitch prevented DV360 buyers from accessing its Open Bidding inventory, while those same dollars continued to flow into AdX. Google called this an unfortunate issue and explained that it had been fixed.