Confirming the allegations against Google from October this year, ten of the US states has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google yesterday. The company was accused of having monopolistic behavior in several ad markets and search rankings. Google has denied these allegations to several publishers though.
Antitrust lawsuits against Google
Handling antitrust lawsuits of various kinds is uncommon for small or medium businesses, but it is for giants like Google. The American company has long been blamed for various violations and fined billions by several countries. Yet, they continue to operate in the same manner and still used to attract lawsuits.
In a recent incident, ten of 50 US states are filed their lawsuits against the Google for preferential Search ranking and its ad business. Led by Texas, states include Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Utah, all making their lawsuits.
They’re commonly accusing that Google has turned into a monopoly in the ad market, with being the largest of display ad exchanges, publisher ad servers, ad-buying tools and display ad networks. Being huge, it’s able to block competition and violated many state and federal antitrust laws.
A statement from the lawsuit read about Google’s special acquisition of DoubleClick in 2008, which is “leading provider of the ad server tools that online publishers, including newspapers and other media companies, use to sell their graphical display advertising inventory on exchanges. As the new middleman between publishers and exchanges, Google quickly began to use its new position to exert leverage.”
They also claimed that Google arranged with Facebook to block the competition in the digital ad industry as well.
On the other hand, Google strictly denied these allegations calling them as meritless and also saying that there’s plenty of competition.
Aside from the ad segment, Google may face yet another legal allegation from 30 US states led by Colorado, about its preferential Search rankings like pushing YouTube in the search results and any of its products.
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