According to reports, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is getting ready to file a lawsuit against Google over the tech giant’s hegemony in the online advertising market.
Persons familiar with the plans said that the DOJ will file the case before the end of the week. It will be the most recent in a string of antitrust cases brought by federal and state governments against the firm.
Google hasn’t released a remark regarding the rumored DOJ legal strategy, despite the fact that the company has previously refuted claims of monopolistic business practices. The corporation has previously mentioned firms like Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft as fierce rivals in the field of digital advertising in evidence and court documents.
The $278.6 billion digital advertising market in the United States and the $626.86 billion global digital advertising market are both dominated by Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
The DOJ’s alleged lawsuit will be the second against the tech giant since the department sued Google in 2020 over the latter’s search practices.
At the time, William Barr, the attorney general at the time, claimed that Google was the “gatekeeper of the Internet.”
He said,“This lawsuit strikes at the heart of Google’s grip over the internet for millions of American consumers, advertisers, small businesses and entrepreneurs beholden to an unlawful monopolist.”
For the millions of American consumers, marketers, small businesses, and entrepreneurs subject to an unlawful monopolist, this case “strikes at the heart of Google’s grasp over the internet,” he said.
In November, Google reached a settlement with dozens of states who had sued the firm for using location monitoring. With the district attorneys of 40 states, Google reached a $391.5 million settlement over allegations that it tracked users’ whereabouts even after they turned off the location monitoring feature on their phones.
According to a statement from Google spokesman José Castaeda,“Consistent with improvements we’ve made in recent years, we have settled this investigation which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago.”
Google has recently come under fire for allegations of political prejudice against Republicans in addition to antitrust court concerns. In April, the Republican National Committee (RNC) filed an FEC complaint against Google, claiming that by using its spam filter for Gmail, the corporation was stifling GOP campaign emails.
The RNC used a March 2022 report from the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University as evidence in its complaint.
“All three services displayed some disparity, with Outlook marking Democrat emails as spam approximately 27% more than Republican emails, and Yahoo marking Democrat emails as spam approximately 14% more. In comparison, however, Google’s Gmail truly stands apart, as it marked Republican emails as spam at more than an 820% higher rate than it marked emails from Democrat candidates.” According to the complaint ,“The study’s findings are shocking.”
