Google might have set a precedent this week when it tried to end an antitrust investigation by the European Union with an offer to divest its advertising marketplace Ad Exchange (AdX).

But it didn’t work. European publishers rejected the offer as insufficient, Reuters reported, citing two people with direct knowledge.

As if Google’s antitrust challenges in the U.S. are not enough, the company’s business attracted European Union regulators last year following a complaint from the European Publishers Council.

In the U.S, Google is fighting claims by antitrust authorities seeking to make the company sell its Ad Manger product that contains AdX and DoubleClick for Publishers.

The rejection by publishers to only sell AdX seemed to be about more than divesting the company — also that Google still would own a large portion of the market.

Lee Hepner, a California-based antitrust lawyer and senior legal counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project weighed in about Google contemplating lowering its 20% fee on AdX and making up for that revenue by raising the fee on its publisher ad server.

“Google will find a way to make up their revenue,” he said, during a video call Thursday with journalists hosted by Check My Ads. “I think what we are seeing in the EU is a sign of Google’s desperation. They understand the cards are stacked against them and it will be easier to settle.”

Hepner said the publisher ad server where Google has more than a 90% market share is complicated by the fact it is incredibly difficult for publishers to move their inventory off one ad service to another. It means that the divestiture of the ad server will not solve the problem.

When someone asked what will become of the ad industry if the U.S. Department of Justice loses, despite it making a clear case for antitrust. You might remember is not a trial by jury. The judge will make the ultimate decision.

Hepner said the case is about the future of the open web, and whether or not there will be “a distributed horizontal internet anymore.”

Google is already causing “harm” to the open web, he said, in a sense it’s “incentivized” to move content distributed on the open web onto its own platform like the searches on a results page where you’re no longer clicking on links, but rather getting information from a chatbot.

“I think we will continue to see the decline of the open web if Google loses the case,” he said. “I liken the open web to a small business neighborhood community. These are the standalone businesses where you see innovation and culture merge. The loss of that will be really sad. It’s something worth preserving.”

Google’s overall control of that ecosystem will cause real harm, he said, adding that Google could win this case on a technicality forcing policy makers to step in.