Google in hot water over ad tech monopoly

SEARCH engine company Google is facing a lawsuit filed by the United States Justice Department over the company’s alleged monopoly on the digital advertising market.

The civil antitrust case was filed before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

It said that Google’s monopoly of multiple digital advertising technology products violates Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act.

The suit will be the Justice Department’s second antitrust case against the firm since 2020, which is the dominant player in the $278.6 billion U.S. online market, dominating the majority of the technology used to purchase, distribute, and deliver online advertising, a Bloomberg report said.

Not the first time

In 2020, the Trump administration filed the first lawsuit against Google for alleged anti-competitive harms in its search engine and advertising.

As per the report, Google’s stock also plummeted by less than 1 percent Tuesday.

“Google’s anticompetitive behavior has raised barriers to entry to artificially high levels, forced key competitors to abandon the market for ad tech tools, dissuaded potential competitors from joining the market, and left Google’s few remaining competitors marginalized and unfairly disadvantaged,” the lawsuit reads.

Pressured by Google?

According to U.S. authorities, it said that Google pressured publishers and advertisers into utilizing the firm’s exclusive ad technology offerings and snatched up competitors through anticompetitive mergers.

In a statement, the Justice Department said Google controls crucial digital advertising technology, popularly known as the “ad tech stack,” on which website publishers rely to sell ads and advertisers rely on buying ads and reaching prospective customers.

“Today’s complaint alleges that Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful conduct to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. 

Over the past 15 years, Google has been involved in unfair competition and exclusive conduct that included acquiring ad tech rivals to neutralize or remove them, using its dominant position in the digital advertising market to compel more publishers and advertisers to use its products, and impeding the use of rival products, the Justice Department said.

Banner Photo Credit: David Nagle, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons