The Department of Justice and eight US states have filed a complaint against Google for violating competition law in the online advertising market.
Google is once again attacked by public authorities because of its practices considered anti-competitive. This time, it is the Department of Justice as well as eight American states that are stepping up to the plate. In question: the monopoly of the giant in the online advertising market.
Google would have a monopoly position in Internet advertising
An antitrust complaint was filed on January 24 in the federal court of Alexandria in the State of Virginia, by the department, as well as California, Virginia, Connecticut, Colorado, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Tennessee, precise The world. The Department of Justice says that ” Google has used anti-competitive, exclusionary and unlawful methods to eliminate, or drastically reduce, any threat to its dominance over the technologies used for digital advertising “.
The attackers want the payment of damages, but above all “ the sale of its activities related to the sale of online advertising space », adds France News. Deputy Justice Minister Vanita Gupta goes further, stating that “ these methods have weakened the free and open internet, and increased costs for businesses and the United States government, including the army. »
A profitable online advertising market
A very important complaint since it directly attacks the heart of Google’s economic model: it is advertising on its search engine that has created the company’s financial power. As reminded Bloomberg, the American online advertising market represents 278.6 billion dollars, for a global market valued at 626.86 billion dollars. Google owns a very large chunk of it, and its advertising business is expected to earn Alphabet $73.8 billion in 2023 in the United States alone.
If the case goes very far, one can think that the subsidiary of Alphabet would even be forced to sell part of its activities related to online advertising. To defend itself, Google highlights the fact that said market is very competitive and made up of other major players such as Amazon, Meta and Microsoft.
Google’s antitrust history that still complements each other
After Joe Biden’s inauguration, the Department of Justice filed another complaint related to Google’s anti-competitive practices. It is linked to its dominant position in the search engine market and the trial is expected this year.
In the recent history of Google’s anti-competitive practices, there is for example a fine of 2.4 billion euros pronounced in November 2021. The giant put forward its own price comparator on its search engine, an advantage deemed unfair for competition. More recently last June, a job ad site filed a complaint against Google for the same reason, this time for its job search service. A few months ago, we learned that Google would have signed financial partnerships to dissuade its competitors from creating alternative application stores to the Play Store.
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