What if Google is forced to sell its ad-exchange business?
An AdX/DFP forced sale splits Google's ad-tech stack — a GOOGL margin and open-web-plumbing issue, idiosyncratic to one name; the broad risk-off tick is noise. Rhymes with prior ad-tech consent decrees that reshuffle share without denting aggregate ad spend. Forward angle: the real beneficiaries are independent SSPs/DSPs (The Trade Desk, PubMatic) that gain neutral inventory access — a relative-value long vs. Alphabet, not an index trade.
Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.
The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 1–3 years horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. DOJ wins forced sale of Google's AdX and DFP ad-tech stack, splitting the open-web ad pipeline. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.