The Justice Department, along with eight states, has filed a new antitrust lawsuit against Google, alleging the tech giant has engaged in anticompetitive conduct to preserve a “monopolistic grip” on digital advertising.
The eight states joining the suit include Virginia, California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Tennessee.
“Google, a single company with pervasive conflicts of interest, now controls: (1) the technology used by nearly every major website publisher to offer advertising space for sale; (2) the leading tools used by advertisers to buy that advertising space; and (3) the largest ad exchange that matches publishers with advertisers each time that ad space is sold,” according to the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
The DOJ and the states suing Google said they are filing legal action “for violations of the Sherman Act to halt Google’s anticompetitive scheme, unwind Google’s monopolistic grip on the market, and restore competition to digital advertising,” per the lawsuit.
Reps for Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The DOJ has taken legal action against Google before. In 2020, the Justice Department had filed another antitrust lawsuit against Google, alleging that the company has virtual monopoly on search and search advertising to the detriment of consumers and competitors.
Google’s “pervasive power over the entire ad tech industry has been questioned by its own digital
advertising executives,” according to the latest lawsuit, citing an exec who raised the question of whether there “is there a deeper issue with us owning the platform, the exchange, and a huge network? The analogy would be if Goldman or Citibank owned the NYSE.”
More to come.