The US Justice Department has joined with eight American states to sue Google over its alleged monopolisation over the digital advertising sector.
“The lawsuit we have filed today seeks to hold Google to account for what we allege are its longstanding monopolies in digital advertising technologies that content creators use to sell ads and advertisers use to buy ads on the open Internet,” said the Justice Department’s antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter.
“Google’s pervasive power over the entire ad tech industry has been questioned by its own digital advertising executives,” according to the complaint.
“The analogy would be if Goldman or Citibank owned the NYSE.”
The suit is seeking to split up Google’s advertising empire.
Google countered that the lawsuit “attempts to pick winners and losers in the highly competitive advertising technology sector” and “largely duplicates an unfounded lawsuit by the Texas Attorney General, much of which was recently dismissed by a federal court.”
Google wrote in a blog post: “DOJ is doubling down on a flawed argument that would slow innovation, raise advertising fees, and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow.”
This is the second antitrust suit DOJ has launched against Google, and the fifth such suit to be filed in the US alone against Google’s advertising practices.
Parent company Alphabet dropped 2.5 per cent after news of the suit was reported.
