Google’s Sundar Pichai testifies before the House Judiciary Committee as he was seen on a laptop in Washington, DC, via YouTube on July 29, 2020.
Carolyn Van Houten | The Washington Post | Getty Images
Google is facing a new antitrust lawsuit from a Texas-led group of attorneys-general, this time focusing on its advertising technology services.
The lawsuit alleges that Google has illegally acquired, attempted, or maintained a monopoly on multiple strides of the online advertising market, including the buy and sell side. It is also alleged that Google made illegal binding agreements between its ad products, so publishers had to use a different Google tool if they chose to exchange ads.
The lawsuit alleges that Google’s 2008 acquisition of ad tech company DoubleClick was a “fundamental change” in which the company began leveraging as a middleman to collect payments from every step of the complex online ad buying process to extract.
The complaint alleges that Google and Facebook, labeled “co-conspirators”, harmed competition through an illegal agreement to fake auctions and fix prices. According to the complaint, the search giant allegedly struck a deal to curb competition when Facebook announced plans in 2017 to compete with Google in ad tech. Under the alleged agreement, Google would grant Facebook certain advantages at auctions it conducts for the inventory of advertising for mobile apps.
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The AGs are looking for remedial action that could include separation and fines. They also called for a lawsuit.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a video announcing the lawsuit that Google had used its alleged monopoly power to control pricing and “collude to manipulate auctions.”
“Google effectively eliminated its competition and crowned itself the leader of online advertising,” Paxton said in the video.
Nine Republican-led states are joining Texas as co-plaintiffs: Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Utah.
“If the free market were a baseball game, Google positioned itself as a pitcher, batsman and referee,” said Paxton.
“Attorney General Paxton’s ad-tech claims are unfounded, but he carried on despite all the facts,” a Google spokesman said in a statement. “We’ve invested in cutting-edge ad tech services that help businesses and consumers. Digital ad prices have come down over the past decade. Ad tech fees are falling too. Ad tech fees from Google are below the industry average. These are the hallmarks of a highly competitive industry. We will vigorously defend ourselves against its unfounded claims in court. “
Here is the full complaint:
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