Google accused of abusing monopoly in advertising by 10 US states
In a second antitrust case against Google in two months, ten US states led by Texas accuse Google of misuse of monopoly power in digital advertising. According to the Wall Street Journal, this antitrust case goes back more than a decade, alleging that ‘Google quietly built up and defended its dominance in the market for digital ads, beginning with its acquisition of the ad-technology firm DoubleClick in 2008.’
The state prosecutors said that Google overcharged publishers for the ads and excluded competition which tried to challenge their dominance. They also said that Google had reached an illegal agreement with Facebook to limit their own efforts to compete with Google in the digital advertising sector.
Google has called the lawsuit ‘meritless’.
This antitrust case contains allegations against Google that aren’t addressed in detail in a lawsuit filed by the US Department of Justice in October 2020, which was focused on dominance of Google in the search market.
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