Alphabet hit with a new antitrust lawsuit over Google’s online ads
While companies like Google have seen countless antitrust cases brought against it by the EU, the US Department of Justice has shown itself to be far more forgiving. After years of leniency, however, those tides are finally shifting. Today, nearly two and a half years afterfiling an antitrust lawsuit against Googlefor its search dominance, the DOJ is bringing another antitrust case against Alphabet over alleged abuse of a monopoly through its online advertising platforms.
The newest suitwas filed Tuesday, as reported byThe New York Times. Several states, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Virginia, have joined the US Department of Justice in today’s complaint. The lawsuit alleges Google stifled competition in the ad space with “a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers and brokers, to facilitate digital advertising.” If the plaintiffs ultimately win their case, Google could be forced to sell off parts — or even all — of its ad businesses.
For its part,Google published a responseon the company’s blog, claiming the DOJ’s lawsuit is “attempting to rewrite history” by targeting previously-approved acquisitions. The post also highlights several competitors to Google in the advertising space, including Microsoft and TikTok.
This case had been brewing for some time. In July 2022,Google reportedly offered to restructure its ad businessin an attempt to pacify the DOJ’s investigators, who at the time, were focused on how Google participated in its own auctions for ad sales, giving it the ability to direct business to itself and away from competitors. The Mountain View company’s offer to investigators involved making the ad business entirely segregated from Google Search while still maintaining ownership under the Alphabet umbrella.
Apending lawsuit filed by the US DOJagainst Google in October 2020 has held atentative trial date for September 12th, 2023for over two years now. That case will seek to determine if the company used its dominance in online search to hinder competition in the market with anti-competitive practices such as striking deals to make it the default search provider in browsers, phones, and smart speakers.
Meanwhile, Alphabet faces increasing legal scrutiny around the world. In 2021,Google was fined $177 millionby the South Korean government for forcing OEMs to sign contracts stating they wouldn’t launch phones with forked versions of Android. TheCompetition Committee of India fined Googlemore than $161 million for requiring device makers to pre-install certain Google apps when they shipped Android phones, a decision that was upheld in January 2023. To date, the largest penalty against the search giant was issued by the European Union for a record €4.1 billion ($4.5 billion) over Android policies that promote the usage of Google apps and services — a decision thatAlphabet has appealedwithin the last two months.
This news comes just days afterGoogle announced it was laying offover 12,000 workers, a decision that hasalready impacted future-focused projects like Fuchsia and Area 120. Google is not the only tech company facing workforce crunch recently — in January alone,Spotify cut back its staff by 600, Microsoft laid off 10,000 employees, and Amazon cut 18,000 jobs.
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