The US Department of Justice sued Google on Tuesday over its ‘monopoly’ in the online advertising market, according to a court document, as the internet search giant already faces other lawsuits related to competition law.
“Google has used anti-competitive, exclusionary and illegal methods to eliminate, or drastically reduce, any threat to its dominance over the technologies used for digital advertising”, asserts the authority.
The ministry and eight American states, including California and New York, are asking the courts to condemn the Californian group for violating competition law, to make it pay damages and to order the cession of its activities related to the sale online advertising space.
The complaint explains that Google controls both the technologies used by “virtually all websites” to sell banners or pop-up windows to brands, as well as the tools advertisers use to buy these spaces, as well as the market where have take place the transactions.
“More than 13 billion advertisements are sold every day” on the web in the United States, note the plaintiffs.
They claim that Google has abused its dominant position to exclude its rivals, in particular by “systematically taking control of a wide variety of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers and other market players”.
“The damages are clear: website publishers earn less, and advertisers spend more,” asserts the complaint.
Google has already been fined in the past for violating competition law, notably by the European Union.
In the United States, the company is already facing lawsuits launched at the end of 2020 by a coalition of states led by Texas.
According to their accusations, Google sought to drive out competition by manipulating ad auctions – the state-of-the-art system that determines which ads appear on web pages based on an anonymized user profile.