The U.S. Department of Justice and eight states on Tuesday Sued Google over its online advertising businessallegedly harming advertisers and publishers by abusing the company’s monopoly power.
DOJ’s complaint (read the full below) has been filed in federal court in Virginia. He claims that Google is “disrupting legitimate competition in the ad technology industry” by taking control of its online advertising systems and “entering all aspects of the digital advertising market”. Google allegedly does this by eliminating competition through acquisitions and using its dominance to push advertisers to use their products over others’ products. The complaint identifies only Google, not any individual, as the defendant. It also calls for Google to sell part of its ad technology business.
The Justice Department also said that Google penalized websites that “dare to use competing ad tech products” and that it “used its dominance in ad tech to drive more action to its ad tech products, where it inflicted inflated fees to fill their own pockets.” costs of advertisers and publishers allegedly serving.
The lawsuit is the latest in the government’s efforts to rein in Big Tech. The most financially successful companies on the planet have tremendous power over our lives and businesses around the world.
Google denied the allegations.
“DOJ’s lawsuit today seeks to determine the winners and losers in the highly competitive ad tech industry,” Google advertising lead Dan Taylor said in a blog post. Google argued that the Justice Department case largely replicated a “baseless case” dismissed in federal court by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Taylor said the Justice Department’s case was flawed and would “slow innovation, increase advertising fees, and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow.”
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Deputy Attorney General Jonathan Kanter said at a news conference Tuesday that despite some similarities to the Texas case, the Justice Department is conducting its own years-long investigation that shows Google maintains “numerous monopolies.”
The Justice Department’s case is a rare case where the ministry requests the liquidation of a large company. Other examples include its confrontation with mainframe manufacturer IBM in the 1970s, telephone giant AT&T in 1982, and Windows creator Microsoft in 2000.
It comes as governments around the world try to curb Big Tech. The US Senate thought as much last year American Innovation and Choice Online Act Reducing the influence of Amazon, Apple and Google in digital markets. Google last year Fined for user tracking in France and accepted $391.5 million deal with state attorneys for location tracking apps.
Kanter said Google’s dominance in digital ads is the equivalent of banking firms like Goldman Sachs or Citibank, which own the New York Stock Exchange. Google has been doing this for 15 years, inflating advertising costs, reducing website revenues, stifling innovation and “flattening our public opinion market,” he said. Kanter also claimed that Google’s behavior harmed the US government and military.
Among the alleged instances of harassment, Kanter said of Google:
- Link edits were used to lock creators into Google’s system.
- Manipulated ad auctions by providing first look and last look advantages over the bidding process.
- Websites were blocked from using competing technology and penalized those who tried it.
- Collected and used competitor’s bid data.
Kanter also used information from Google’s documents and employees to build an argument for the company’s dominance:
- One Google employee said the company’s ad exchange was an “authoritarian tool”.
- Senior executives said it was “a miracle” and “a miracle” for publishers to switch ad servers.
- “Our goal should be all or nothing. Use Google’s ad exchange or don’t reach our advertiser request,” said one Google executive.
- A Google employee said the company “overcharges” advertisers by $3 billion a year and is transferring the money to publishers to keep them committed to Google’s ad technology.
- A Google executive detailed the steps to “dry up” competitors.
The Computer and Communications Industry Association, a technology lobbying group, has previously sided with Google despite some support for “appropriate” government intervention: “We find this lawsuit and the radical structural solutions it proposes unfair. Digital services compete fiercely for advertising dollars. “The complaint seems to ignore these dynamics and the macro trends of the global advertising market,” the group said in a statement.
This is the second Justice Department antitrust lawsuit against Google, but the first from the Biden administration. A October 2020 case During the Trump administration, Google allegedly blocked rivals by making deals with Apple and Samsung to be the default search engine on their devices.
face to face with google A Texas-led antitrust lawsuit, along with 16 states and territories, claims the search giant is working with Facebook to give the social network an edge in online ad auctions. Under the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Department of Justice is also allowed to file a lawsuit if it believes the federal government has been harmed.
Last year, Google tried to fend off the Justice Department lawsuit as follows: proposes to split the ad tech businessThe Wall Street Journal reported.
Stephen Shankland of CNET contributed to this report.
