TL;DR
- The US Department of Justice has officially filed a lawsuit against Google.
- The DOJ claims Google created a digital ad market that unfairly favors its own products.
- The DOJ is joined by eight states in its complaint.
Google found itself in a lot of legal trouble in 2022. For example, it was sued for reportedly collecting location data even after users disabled it. It also was sued for reportedly gathering the biometric data of people in Texas without their explicit consent. For 2023, it seems like the company will continue to struggle with legal issues as it was just sued for its digital ad market.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has officially filed a lawsuit against Google, according to TechCrunch. In the suit, the DOJ argues that the search giant has a monopolistic grip over the digital ad market that allows it to unfairly favor its own products. Joined in the suit are eight states that include New York, California, Colorado, and others.
The DOJ lays out its case stating:
One industry behemoth, Google, has corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers, and brokers, to facilitate digital advertising. Having inserted itself into all aspects of the digital advertising marketplace, Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies.
Although the lawsuit is being filed now, this is something that’s been in the works since 2021.
According to TechCrunch, Google defended itself by claiming the digital ad market is healthy and competitive. It also referenced Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft as strong competitors that prove the market is working as it should.
This defense is reminiscent of the defense it used in 2022 after the DOJ accused the company of buying default exclusivity for its search engine. In that instance, Google’s lawyer stated the DOJ and states were focusing too much on the smaller search engines and not on the real competition like Meta, Amazon, and TikTok.
