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The Justice Department and several states sued Google on Tuesday, alleging that its dominance in digital advertising harms competition.
The government claims that Google’s plan to assert its dominance is to “neutralize or eliminate” competitors through acquisitions and force advertisers to use its products by making it difficult to use competitors’ products.
The antitrust lawsuit was filed in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Attorney General Merrick Garland is expected to discuss the matter at a news conference later Tuesday.
The DOJ lawsuit accuses Google of unlawfully monopolizing the way ads are served online to the exclusion of competitors. This includes the 2008 acquisition of DoubleClick, the dominant ad server, and the subsequent launch of technology that locks down the split-second bidding process for ads displayed on web pages.
A representative for Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, did not immediately respond to a message for comment.
Dina Srinivasan, a Yale University fellow and adtech expert, said the lawsuit is “huge” because it aligns the entire country — state and federal governments — in a bipartisan legal attack on Google.
This is the latest legal action taken against Google by the Department of Justice or local state governments. In October 2020, for example, the Trump administration and eleven state attorneys general sued Google for violating antitrust laws, alleging anticompetitive practices in the search and search advertising market.
The lawsuit essentially aligns the Biden administration and the new state with 35 states and the District of Columbia that sued Google in December 2020 over similar issues.
The states involved in the suit include California, Virginia, Connecticut, Colorado, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Tennessee.
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