TL;DR
- On 30 September 2026 Judge P. Kevin Castel (SDNY, MDL 21-md-3010) denied most of Google's summary judgment motions, so Gannett, Daily Mail and AdX class claims can advance toward a jury; no liability has been found.
- Expert damages figures in the opinion: $900,771,489 for Gannett, $599,955,198 for Daily Mail and $1.72 billion for the AdX class through 31 March 2024.
- Four bidding practices advance in the Gannett and Daily Mail cases: Enhanced Dynamic Allocation, Minimum Bid to Win, Bernanke and Poirot.
- Summary judgment for Google on: New York General Business Law claims, The Progressive's AdSense claims and Inform's federal antitrust claims. The opinion sets no trial date.
On 30 September 2026, Judge P. Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York denied most of Google's summary judgment motions in the publisher damages cases inside the Google ad tech MDL (21-md-3010), so claims by Gannett, Daily Mail and a class of publishers that sold ads through Google's AdX exchange can advance toward a jury trial. That is not a finding that Google is liable for those damages: summary judgment is the stage where a judge decides whether a reasonable jury could find for the plaintiffs. The 88-page opinion also granted Google summary judgment on several claims, including New York consumer-protection claims, The Progressive's AdSense claims and Inform Inc.'s federal antitrust claims, and it sets no trial date.
What the court decided on 30 September 2026
The ruling covers four coordinated cases: Associated Newspapers and Mail Media (together "Daily Mail"), Gannett, the consolidated publisher cases that include the AdX class, and Inform. The opinion and order filed on CourtListener lists the outcomes in its introduction and again in its conclusion.
- Gannett and Daily Mail: Google's motions to exclude their experts Shengwu Li and Ali Hortacsu were denied. Google's summary judgment motion was granted only as to their New York General Business Law claims and otherwise denied.
- AdX class and Mikula Web Solutions: Google's summary judgment motion was denied, and Google's motion to exclude the experts Einer Elhauge and Anand Das was denied.
- The Progressive: Google's motion was granted and the court directed the clerk to enter judgment for Google on The Progressive's claims.
- Inform Inc.: Google's motion was granted on its Sherman Act and Clayton Act claims. Two remaining claims under Georgia law, tortious interference and fraud, are pending a decision on supplemental jurisdiction after the parties file letter briefs.
The opinion also notes that Google's unclean hands defense was voluntarily dismissed, and that the court did not address equitable relief at this stage.
Background: what earlier rulings already settled
The court's 27 October 2025 decision, which the opinion calls Google III, applied issue preclusion to findings from Judge Leonie Brinkema's bench trial in the Eastern District of Virginia. As the opinion summarizes it, Google was barred from relitigating the existence of separate publisher ad server and ad exchange markets, that those markets are worldwide, that it engaged in unlawful tying, First Look, Last Look and Dynamic Revenue Share conduct, and that it unlawfully tied its DFP ad server to AdX. The same ruling covered Unified Pricing Rules.
The 30 September opinion repeats a limit from that earlier ruling: preclusion does not relieve plaintiffs of the burden of proving antitrust injury and damages. That is why this ruling is about injury, damages and the practices that went beyond the Virginia findings, not about whether Google held monopoly power in those markets.
The damages figures, and whose numbers they are
The figures below are damages calculated by plaintiffs' expert economists, and the opinion reports them as such. It is not a finding that Google owes these amounts.
- Ali Hortacsu, retained by Gannett and Daily Mail, concludes that Daily Mail incurred $599,955,198 and Gannett $900,771,489 in damages, plus interest and ongoing accrual.
- Hortacsu splits those totals into United States and rest-of-world damages: for Daily Mail $216,880,035 and $383,075,163, and for Gannett $797,831,266 and $102,940,233.
- Einer Elhauge, for the AdX class, calculates aggregate class-wide damages of $1.72 billion through 31 March 2024, with additional damages accruing afterward. His model rests on a take rate of 19.67 percent charged on AdX transactions against a 10 percent benchmark that Google would have charged without the two product ties.
- David Kennedy, for Inform, valued Inform at $479 million as a going concern in 2014. Google won summary judgment on the federal antitrust counts.
| Plaintiff | Expert damages figure in the opinion | Summary judgment outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Gannett | $900,771,489 (Hortacsu) | Denied except New York General Business Law claims |
| Daily Mail | $599,955,198 (Hortacsu) | Denied except New York General Business Law claims |
| AdX publisher class | $1.72 billion through 31 Mar 2024 (Elhauge) | Denied |
| Inform Inc. | $479 million 2014 going-concern value (Kennedy) | Granted on federal antitrust claims |
| The Progressive | Not stated in the opinion | Granted; judgment for Google |
The four bidding practices that advance for Gannett and Daily Mail
Google's motion targeted practices that Judge Brinkema's findings did not cover, which the parties call the Non-Precluded Acts. For each practice below, Judge Castel concluded that Gannett and Daily Mail pointed to evidence that would permit a reasonable jury to find competitive harm in the ad exchange market. These are the plaintiffs' allegations as supported by their evidence, not rulings that the conduct was unlawful.
Enhanced Dynamic Allocation
Plaintiffs say Enhanced Dynamic Allocation, or EDA, redirected publishers' premium inventory away from negotiated direct deals and made it available for programmatic bids on AdX. The opinion cites a September 2016 internal Google email stating that with EDA on, the reserve price was set at $1 and any AdX buyer could win. Hortacsu estimates EDA reduced the global value of direct sales by about 24.1 percent. In a separate passage on mitigation, the opinion reports his calculation that EDA caused Gannett $348.9 million in United States damages and $434.8 million worldwide. The court also held that a reasonable jury could find EDA caused antitrust injury to both publishers.
Minimum Bid to Win
Google adopted Minimum Bid to Win in 2019 when it moved to a first-price auction. Under it, the DFP ad server shared with AdX bidders the lowest bid they would have needed to win a just-concluded auction. Li opines that this depressed prices paid for publisher impressions and discouraged advertisers from bidding on rival exchanges, and the court said Google's challenges to his conclusions are best weighed by a jury.
Bernanke and Alchemist
The opinion groups Project Bernanke (2013 to 2015), Global Bernanke (2015 to 2019), Project Bell v2 (2016 to 2019) and Alchemist (2019 to present). Plaintiffs say Google used its Google Ads buying tool to inflate and deflate advertiser bids on AdX in ways that favored AdX over other exchanges. An internal Google memorandum quoted in the opinion states that Bernanke raised the AdX win rate from 37 percent to 44 percent and increased revenue by $290 million. Plaintiffs do not argue that Bernanke shows monopolization of a market for ad-buying tools, so their claim does not depend on showing injury to ad buyers.
Poirot
Poirot adjusted bids in the DV360 buying tool to reduce bids on rival exchanges and increase them on AdX. Plaintiffs focus on the period from 2019 to 2022. Li calculates that Poirot increased AdX revenue by 7.5 percent and reduced spending on rival exchanges by 14.7 percent, and the opinion cites internal Google documents describing spend on AdX rising by 7 percent. The court again held that a jury could find competitive harm.
Why the AdX class claims advance differently
The AdX class does not rely on the same practices. It argues that two product ties let Google charge a supracompetitive take rate. The "Act 1" tie matches the DFP and AdX tie found unlawful in Virginia; the "Act 2" tie, unique to the class, says Google coerced DFP customers into selling on AdX through bid-manipulation initiatives including EDA, Dynamic Allocation, Dynamic Revenue Sharing and Unified Pricing Rules. The conclusion of the opinion records that the plaintiffs in the publisher class litigation (21-cv-7034) do not rely on Project Bernanke, Line-Item Capping, Redaction of Auction Data, Project Poirot, Project Elmo, Minimum Bid to Win or discriminatory risk aversion coefficients for their remaining claims. The class has not isolated damages for each individual practice, and the court denied Google's motion on that ground.
Claims where Google won summary judgment
Judge Castel granted Google summary judgment on the General Business Law claims of Gannett and Daily Mail because no reasonable jury could find the alleged deceptions were consumer-oriented. The opinion describes both publishers as sophisticated, well-resourced customers who negotiated agreements and sold billions of impressions through Google's products.
The Progressive's tying claims failed because it sold more than 99.9 percent of its impressions through DFP, so the court found no evidence that it was subject to the alleged product tie between the AdSense ad server and the AdSense auction platform. Mikula, which brings similar AdSense claims, kept them.
Inform's Sherman Act claims failed on two grounds the opinion sets out: no sufficient evidence of antitrust injury in the markets for open-web display ad servers and exchanges, and no sufficient evidence of Google's market power in online video advertising. The opinion says the summary judgment record indicates at most 2.7 percent of Inform's transactions on AdX were open-web display ads.
On Google's mitigation defenses, the court partly sided with the publishers: Google may not argue that Daily Mail could have mitigated damages by publishing fewer "salacious" articles or that Gannett could have by making different business decisions. But Google may still argue the publishers could have limited exposure to EDA by changing settings in DFP and AdX, and the opinion records Google's argument that Gannett could have reduced its EDA damages by $191.4 million by not using AdX for indirect sales.
What this means for Thai marketers
This section is RA's analysis; the opinion says nothing about Thailand. The plaintiffs are publishers, not advertisers, and the opinion notes the Bernanke claim does not depend on injury to ad buyers. Nothing in it orders refunds to advertisers or changes how Google Ads campaigns are billed today. A Thai advertiser running Search campaigns is not affected by this ruling.
The ruling is relevant to anyone who buys display, video or programmatic inventory through Google's tools, because the practices at issue concern how bids were adjusted and how auctions were run. A reasonable review for a Thai brand buying programmatic display is to ask its agency which exchanges and buying tools its campaigns run through, whether placement and exchange-level reporting is available, and how bid strategies handle the first-price auction Google moved to in 2019. These questions are sensible whatever the jury decides, and they connect to the account hygiene covered in RA's Google Ads management service.
Timing is the main uncertainty. The opinion sets no trial date, the plaintiffs' damages numbers are contested expert calculations, and the opinion does not discuss what Google may do next. Treating the ruling as a signal that these theories will be tested in front of a jury is accurate; treating it as a decision against Google on damages is not.
Frequently asked questions
Did the judge rule that Google owes Gannett and Daily Mail money?
No, the ruling lets their damages claims go to a jury but does not find Google liable for any amount. Judge Castel denied Google's summary judgment motions on the bidding practices, which means a reasonable jury could find for the plaintiffs. The dollar figures in the opinion are plaintiffs' expert calculations.
When is the trial?
The opinion does not set a trial date. It resolves summary judgment and expert motions and, in Inform's case, directs letter briefs on supplemental jurisdiction over two Georgia-law claims. Any trial schedule would come from a later order.
On which claims did Google win?
The court granted Google summary judgment on the New York General Business Law claims of Gannett and Daily Mail, The Progressive's AdSense tying claims and Inform's federal antitrust claims. Mikula's AdSense claims survived, and the AdX class claims advance. Inform's two Georgia-law claims remain pending the supplemental jurisdiction question.
Does this affect my Google Ads campaigns?
Not directly. The plaintiffs are publishers who sold ad space through Google's ad tech, and the opinion does not change advertiser pricing or campaign settings. Advertisers buying display or programmatic inventory may still want to ask about exchange-level reporting.
If you want a second look at where your display and video spend runs and what the reporting actually shows, RA's Google Ads team can review the account structure with you.
