Google is aiming to get out of another antitrust trail without breaking up its tech empire as it faces another US court case, this time taking aim at its online advertising business.

Parent company Alphabet may be forced to sell Google’s ad business, AdX, if the company is found to be giving itself an unfair advantage in the sector.

Google narrowly avoided selling off its Chrome browser in a landmark antitrust trail which also took place in the US – the tech giant was ruled to have a monopoly and must share its data in lieu of selling the browser.

The tech giant’s AdX requires online publishers to pay Google a 20% fee to sell ads as users load up websites in an auctions. The trail will also see the US Department of Justice make Google change the mechanism that determines the winner of the auction to be open source.

Back in April, Google was already found to have been holding unlawful monopolies in web advertising – now a judge will decide what remedies are required to remedy this.

Google says the prospect of selling AdX would be logistically untenable and would lead to uncertainty for other stakeholders

The tech giant proposed that it could simply change its policies to make it simpler and easier for publishers to use other platforms to run their ads on Google, but the DOJ has already said this alone would not be enough to restore fair competition.

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Google ties its publisher ad server to AdX, essentially ensuring that publishers which want to use the Google platform to store and manage their ad inventory must use AdX, and therefore pay Google.

The initial ruling found this gave Google’s advertisers unfair advantages in the auctions for ads. It also said that if the DOJ’s upcoming proposals to not improve competition in four years, then Google will be required to sell its publisher and ad server.