The US Department of Justice (DOJ), along with eight other US states have filed a lawsuit against tech-giant Google. DOJ, on Tuesday, accused Google of abusing its dominance in the digital ad market.
It has threatened to dismantle a significant business at the heart of one of Silicon Valley’s most successful online organizations.
According to US Attorney General Merrick Garland, its anti-competitive practices have "weakened, if not destroyed, competition in the ad tech industry."
The government campaigned for forcing Google to sell its ad manager suite, a business that not only contributed significantly to the search engine and cloud company's overall sales but also contributed around 12% of Google's revenue in 2021.
"Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies," the antitrust complaint read. Google charged that the DOJ was "doubling down on a flawed argument that would slow innovation, raise advertising fees, and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow."
The federal government says that it's Big Tech investigations and lawsuits that are aiming at leveling the playing field for smaller rivals to a group of powerful companies, including Amazon, Facebook owner Meta and Apple Inc.
"By suing Google for monopolizing advertising technology, the DOJ today aims at the heart of the internet giant’s power[…]The complaint lays out the many anticompetitive strategies from Google that have held our internet ecosystem back," says Charlotte Slaiman, competition policy director at Public Knowledge.
The Current Lawsuit Follows an Antitrust Lawsuit from 2020
Tuesday’s lawsuit, under the administration of President Joe Biden, follows a 2020 antitrust case filed against Google during the presidency of Donald Trump.
The 2020 lawsuit alleged antitrust violations in the company's acquisition or maintenance of its monopoly in internet search and is scheduled to go to trial in September.
Eight States in Lawsuit
The nearly 15-page lawsuit accuses Google of breaches of US antitrust law and attempts to "halt Google's anti-competitive scheme, unwind Google's monopolistic grip on the market, and restore competition to digital advertising".
If the courts proceed to side with the US government, this might lead to the dissolution of the firm’s advertising business.
The states joining Tuesday’s lawsuit include Connecticut, Colorado, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Virginia, along with Google’s home state California.
