DOJ suit against Google heralded as among ‘most important antitrust cases’ in US history

Anti-monopoly advocates on Tuesday praised the Biden administration and eight states for launching a federal antitrust lawsuit that could break up Google, which is accused of illegally dominating the digital advertising market.

“Competition in the ad tech space is broken, for reasons that were neither accidental nor inevitable,” states the complaint filed by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Virginia in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

“One industry behemoth, Google, has corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers, and brokers, to facilitate digital advertising,” the complaint continues.

“Having inserted itself into all aspects of the digital advertising marketplace, Google has used anti-competitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies,” the document adds, urging the court to force the Alphabet-owned company to sell off its ad tech products.

Echoing the complaint, Demand Progress executive director David Segal pointed out that “Google’s monopoly in the advertising technology market functionally forces publishers and advertisers to use its services.”

“We’re glad to see the Department of Justice demand a breakup of this tech giant, directly taking on its unfair, anti-competitive practices,” he said. “This move is critical to protect our democracy, increase innovation, and strengthen small businesses.”

Bloomberg noted Tuesday that “state attorneys general have filed three separate suits against Google, alleging it dominates the markets for online search, advertising technology, and apps on the Android mobile platform in violation of antitrust laws.”

This is the DOJ’s first case against the tech giant under President Joe Biden but follows another filed just months before he took office. In response to the new filing, a Google spokesperson said that “today’s lawsuit from the DOJ attempts to pick winners and losers in the highly competitive advertising technology sector. It largely duplicates an unfounded lawsuit by the Texas attorney general, much of which was recently dismissed by a federal court. DOJ is doubling down on a flawed argument that would slow innovation, raise advertising fees, and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow.”

Meanwhile, Open Markets Institute executive director Barry Lynn argued that “today’s lawsuit by the Department of Justice against Google for the monopolization of advertising will be remembered as one of the most important antitrust cases in American history. No previous corporation has ever posed such a direct threat to U.S. democracy, or to individual freedom of expression, action, and thought.”

Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, stressed that “by picking the pocket of small businesses, small newspapers, and other publishers, Google actively extracts resources from communities that need them most and threatens a free, local press that lies at the heart of our democracy,”

Originally published at Commondreams.org.