Leonie Brinkema

If they want to, right? And that's a big question.

So then let's go back to the first part of your statement of like, is it pre-bid JS or is it pre-bid server? And to use the technical language and going back to Judge Brinkema's documents from September...

It says that Google, regarding moving into pre-bid, can bid into a qualified pre-bid instance.

And what does that mean? Well, it's either a qualified pre-bid client instance or a qualified pre-bid server instance.

Interesting.

And that's in front of Leonie Brinkema,

who is a very fine judge.

We will keep an eye on both of those cases.

But when it came time to order remedies, neither judge chose to break up the company.

Judge Amit Mehta declined to do so in the search case in his ruling in September 2025, and Judge Leonie Brinkema followed suit in the ad tech case one year later.

That was a disappointment for many market participants and civil society advocates who hoped the cases would upend the status quo.

To discuss what the remedies mean for competition and for the broader effort to hold big tech firms accountable to democracy, particularly in the AI era, I spoke to two experts.

Uh, the Justice Department announced yesterday it's gonna stop all the work on it, uh, after a federal judge in Virginia issued a temporary order blocking the program.

US District Judge, uh, Leonie Brinkema, or Brinkema, uh, issued the order Friday prohibiting the DOJ from transferring money, accepting claims, or dispersing payments from the fund while she weighs whether to issue a longer term injunction.

The fund created through a settlement of Trump's $10 billion lawsuits against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns was designed to compensate Americans who claim the federal government had been weaponized against them.

The, uh, program drew immediate fire when Trump allies from the January 6th Capitol attack, including pardoned rioters, expressed interest in filing claims.

There's a sort of series of cases recently that I think illustrate that problem significantly.

And the two judges that we mentioned, Amit Mehta and Brinkema, Who Brigham was appointed by Clinton.

Meta was appointed, nominated by Obama.

Meta sits on the district court for the District of Columbia.

But once the structure is altered, it is very difficult to go back.

As we see on current consideration, for example, again, in the ad tech investigation just last week or two weeks ago, Judge Brinkema in the US decided that a kind of access remedy on Google would be sufficient.

There is no need to divest.

So once the structure is changed, it's very difficult to go back.