Two anti-trust lawsuits were filed against Google in two days. That makes a total of three cases of trust against the search giant, including one filed in October by the Department of Justice.
This latest lawsuit filed Thursday by the attorneys general from 35 states accuses Google of using anti-competitive behavior to sustain the detection and investigation of advertising monopolies. . The lawsuit follows years of criticism from competitors, lawyers, and campaigners about Google and other major tech companies like Facebook who have been accused for years of using anti-competitive practices.
Each case brought against Google has a slightly different angle and is taken by a different group of states and regulatory bodies. The cases could last for years and, over time, the lawsuits brought by the states could go hand in hand with the federal case. The end result could lead to Google breaking up into smaller companies, according to Sally Hubbard, director of enforcement strategy at the Open Markets Institute and author Monopolies suck.
“I don’t think it’s a real battle whether consumers are hurt or not,” Hubbard told Recode. “It’s a battle whether they broke the law or not.”
The research handling issue
The latest issue, like the one from the DOJ, is aimed at a Google study. He alleges that Google used three types of anti-competitive behavior to conduct its search and investigate ad monopolies. These include contracts with competitors such as Apple to keep it as a standard analytics tool, using its most powerful advertising marketing tool to eliminate competitors from its market, and disadvantage it. search results for competitors working on more specific search platforms such as those for travel or restaurants.
“Google takes advantage of the dependence of directly on specific providers on Google, treats them differently than partners in other commercial segments and limits their ability to gain customers,” the report reads .
While both this and the Department of Justice’s case focus on the investigation and investigation of monopolies, the lawsuit from state lawyers builds on and extends beyond the DOJ case. “[T]his Complaint alleges additional facts revealing a broader pattern of Google’s incompetent behavior, harming users, advertisers and the competitive process, ”the complaint reads.
Google responded to the latest lawsuit with a blog post by Adam Cohen, Google’s director of economic policy, who said changes to his search would hurt consumers. “[The lawsuit] suggesting that we should not have worked to make Research better and that we should not, in fact, be as useful to you, ”the post reads. “This lawsuit calls for changes to the design of Google Search, requiring us to make prominent online media outlets rather than direct links to businesses. ”
The lawsuit carries support from a bipartisan group of attorneys general, unlike the DOJ case that had only the support of Republican AGs.
“Google sits at the crossroads of so many areas of our digital economy and has used its leadership to illegally remove competitors, monitor almost every aspect of our digital life. , and make a profit to the tune of billions, ”said New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat who helped lead the way.
The news case for the digital media industry is welcome. “This latest suit reflects the bipartisan, widespread concerns about Google’s anti-competitive behavior,” Jason Kint, President of digital content trading association Digital Content Next, said in a statement to Recode. “We are pleased to see almost every state step up to overcome Google’s coordinated activity, designed to consolidate its leadership at the expense of publishers, advertisers and advertisers. consumers. ”
The Texas-led ad tech suit
The latest suit is different from the one filed yesterday with a group of 10 Republican state lawyers claiming that their advertising technology is counterproductive. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, conducted the Google investigation and announced the lawsuit in a video posted to Twitter a few hours before the trial was filed.
“Google once again used its monopolistic power to control prices, engage in market crashes to break ropes in a terrible breach of justice,” Paxton said in the video.
The lawsuit alleges that Google engaged in a wide range of anti-competitive behavior to create and maintain its monopoly power in digital advertising markets and to keep out competitors. He also alleges that Google and Facebook illegally agreed not to compete with each other. This could be a particularly damaging account against both companies, as Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act prohibits two companies from colliding in such a manner, and such cases are likely to easier to prove in court.
“In addition to representing both online display advertising buyers and sellers, Google also operates the largest exchange AdX,” read the lawsuit, filed by lawyers. Republicans in Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Kentucky, as well as Texas. “In this electronically traded market, there is Google pitcher, batter, and umpire, all at the same time. ”
This is similar to the New York Stock Exchange also controlling the buying and selling of stocks. “They’re getting information that they shouldn’t have if the market is supposed to function properly,” Hubbard told Recode. “We do not accept this in other areas. ”
Google spokeswoman Julie McAlister told the New York Times that “Attorney General Paxton’s ad tech claims are worthless” and that the company will “protect ourselves from its baseless claims in court. ”
This lawsuit is the first to focus on Google’s leadership in ad tech. In particular, it states that Google is using its market power to “levy a very high tax [redacted] Percentage of advertising dollars flow to countless online publishers and content producers such as online newspapers, cookery websites, and blogs that survive by selling ads on the websites and sites. -their apps. “At the same time, these businesses are passing on costs to consumers, causing them harm, according to a lawsuit.
Last year, Google generated nearly $ 162 billion in revenue, most of which came from advertising. Google controls nearly a third of all digital advertising costs in the U.S., according to eMarketer. Because its tools take control of every part of the advertising process, Google is said to have uneven visibility that allows it to maintain its dominance, according to Keach Hagey and Vivien Ngo at The Wall Street Journal, which last year explained how Google’s ad tech works and why publishers and competitors have been complaining about it for so long.
Meanwhile, Texas attorney general Paxton has recently made headlines for a suspicious lawsuit against swing states in an effort to reverse the results of the presidential election. He lost the lawsuit but, Atlantic argues, won in an attempt to support his political career and draw attention away from his own legal problems, including securities fraud and philosophical accounts. who is faced with for asking investors to buy stock in a company without telling them he got a commission for it.
The federal issue
The two cases launched by state lawyers follow a volley similar to a lawsuit from a federal level. In October, the Department of Justice and 11 states filed a lawsuit against Google, alleging that the company used its investigative leadership to preserve its other monopolies, including advertising . The suit also said Google was paying some companies and blocking others to maintain its lead over competitors. Google pays Apple billions of dollars every year, for example, to customize its search engine in Safari’s web browser.
The DOJ says Google has a monopoly over research in the U.S., where Google controls 90 percent of the market. And since Google’s survey is free to use – users pay for the service by giving their personal data to the company – the issue of government trust is built on the idea that Google’s leadership leads to less competition, which could lead to lower-level results.
“If the government does not enforce anti-trust laws to enable competition, we could lose the next wave of innovation,” Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi said in a news release. “If that happens, Americans may never get to see the next Google.”
Google is almost the only major technical company that opposes scrutiny from government regulators. Earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission and 48 states filed a lawsuit against Facebook, saying its acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp was leading to anti-competitive practices that harm users. And ahead of that issue, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google were the subjects of a 400-page report from Democrats on the House Review Subcommittee on Antitrust. The report argued that these, the world’s four largest tech companies, had used their power as gateways for the industry and that new rules should be reintroduced.
“Simply put, companies that were once scrappy, underground startups that challenged the status quo have become the kind of monopolies we last saw in the time of oil barons and railroad tycoons,” says the her report says.
It remains to be seen whether any legal change will affect any of these lawsuits. Antitrust cases are hard to win, and some argue that it may be difficult to prove that the dominance of these large technical companies is harming consumers. Google provides a powerful search engine and tidies up the digital advertising market, for example, to the benefit of many users. But the sheer number of trust cases against Big Tech launched in the last months of this year shows that the government at least believes there is room for change.
These issues will not be resolved very quickly, at least. The government’s case against Microsoft, which began in 1998, has been going on for years. It is also difficult to compare now until then. Based on the growing role of Big Tech companies in our lives today, the issues being brought up this year are even bigger and more complex.