Thursday 17th December 2020
Monopoly exploited
38 US states are suing Google
The big Internet companies like Google are taking advantage of their monopoly position, and Republicans and Democrats in the USA agree. After two lawsuits against Facebook, a large number of US states are taking legal action against the search engine operator.
Internet giant Google has to grapple with another antitrust lawsuit in the United States. A total of 38 states filed a lawsuit over an alleged illegal monopoly of the company, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced.
Google has been accused of stifling competition in its web search and digital advertising business. The company also uses its market power to keep smaller competitors away and to collect user data, which leads to disadvantages for consumers. It is the third US antitrust lawsuit against the Alphabet Group's subsidiary within a few months.
In October, the US Department of Justice and eleven states had their sights set on Google, and it wasn't until Wednesday that a Texas-led alliance of ten states opened another legal battle. Here, too, it concerns violations of competition law and consumer protection laws. The company is monopolizing the market for online advertising and is not keeping to data protection promises. Google rejected the allegations against US media as baseless.
In addition to the three lawsuits against Google, two were filed against Facebook this month. Taken together, they are considered to be the largest antitrust proceedings in recent times and are already being compared with the 1998 proceedings against Microsoft. This is considered an important step for the later, explosive growth of the Internet. The big internet corporations are currently being criticized in Washington by Democrats and the Republicans of President Donald Trump – one of the few issues on which there is agreement among the parties.
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