The US administration is reportedly preparing to sue internet giant Google for its anti-market advertisement practices and allegedly monopolising online ads.
According to the reports, the Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general are likely to file antitrust lawsuits against Alphabet-owned Google. The Justice Department will be filing a case against the tech-giants in coming months.
Reportedly, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, is likely to file a case against Alphabet Inc. Paxton said the primary focus of the investigation was the broad reach of Google’s online advertising network.
“We think Google has 7,000 data points on just about every human being alive. They control the buy-side (of online advertising), the sell-side and the market which we are concerned gives them way too much power,” Paxton was quoted as saying.
In September last year, Attorneys General of 50 US states, led by Texas, had announced an investigation into Google’s alleged anti-trust practice. The probe focused on the issue of over dominance of Google in the online advertising market and in internet searches.
We will engage in investigations: Google
In a statement to The Verge, Google said, “We continue to engage with the ongoing investigations led by the Department of Justice and Attorney General Paxton and we don’t have any updates or comments on speculation”.
Google has turned over more than 100,000 documents to investigators as part of the ongoing anti-trust probe.
Reportedly, the investigation against Google is one of the greatest efforts to regulate the tech-giant by the US government, with rare coordination between state and federal law enforcement. If filed, this case will be the first major US antitrust action against a tech giant since the Bill Clinton administration’s pursuit of Microsoft in the 1990s.
The suit against the US administration comes on the heels of a similar lawsuit by the European Union last year, who had imposed a fine of 1.49 billion euros ($1.7 billion) on Google for abusing its dominance in the online search market by blocking rivals.