The Department of Justice of the United States and eight states have sued the company Alphabet Inc, parent of Google, demanding that it divest itself of its digital advertising business for alleged monopolization of the digital advertising market.
“Competition in the ad-tech space is broken, for reasons that have not been accidental or unavoidable. An industry behemoth, Google, has corrupted legitimate competition from the participating ad-tech industry in a systematic campaign to seize control of a wide range of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers and brokers to facilitate digital advertising,” the plaintiffs have accused.
The lawsuit is led by the Department of Justice, although the states of Virginia, California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Tennessee have joined the legal action.
Prosecutors in these states have accused Google of keeping “at least” 30% of the campaigns that advertisers advertise on publishers’ websites through its advertising technology. In this sense, the United States has asked the Court that, “as a minimum” it forces Google to provide Google Ad Manager, including its advertising server, the Double Click range of tools and the AdX ad buying and selling platform.
This is the second lawsuit that the Justice Department has filed against Google. In 2020, the agency already began legal proceedings against the technology company, alleging that it had engaged in monopolistic practices to dominate the Internet search sector, as well as advertising in said searches.
