Washington, (EFE).- The Department of Justice of the United States presented this Tuesday an antitrust lawsuit against Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, for its online advertising business.
The department and eight other states accuse the tech giant of illegally abusing its dominance in digital advertising and violating the Sherman Antitrust Act.
“An industry giant, Google, has corrupted legitimate competition in the ad-tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the vast array of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers, and brokers, to facilitate digital advertising,” the lawsuit states.
He adds: “Competition in the ad-tech space has been disrupted for reasons that were neither accidental nor inevitable.”
The lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, seeks to have a court force the company to get rid of Google Ad Manager (its ad management platform) and for the court to prohibit Google from continuing to engage in any of the practices anticompetitive actions described in his complaint.
This is the second major antitrust lawsuit filed against Google by the Department of Justice in the last three years, after it announced in 2020, along with a coalition of attorneys general, the lawsuit for using anticompetitive tactics to illegally monopolize the search markets and online advertising.
The vast majority of Google’s revenue (81% in 2021) comes from advertising. In 2021, it entered 209,000 million for this concept, a figure that makes it the largest advertising company in the world.
Google’s ad dominance stems in large part from the acquisition of ad technology that has given it an ad-serving advantage over its competitors.
In 2007, it bought DoubleClick, an advertising services company that allowed it to sell display ads on websites.
In 2010, it acquired AdMob, a mobile advertising network, with which it launched its mobile advertising business.