The US Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Google for its “monopoly” in the online advertising market, according to a court document, while the giant company is facing other lawsuits related to competition law.
“Google used anticompetitive, exclusionary and illegal means to eliminate or severely reduce any threat to its dominance in digital advertising technologies,” the document said.
The department and eight US states, including California and New York, are asking the court to find the company guilty of violating competition law, to compel it to pay damages, and to order it to limit its activities in selling advertising space online.
The complaint states that Google controls the technologies used by “virtually all websites” to sell banner ads or pop-ups to brands, as well as the tools advertisers use to purchase these spaces and the market in which the transactions took place.
The complainants say that “more than 13 billion ads are sold every day” on the Internet in the United States. They contend that Google has abused its position to exclude its competitors, notably by “systematically controlling a variety of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers, and other market participants.”
“The damages are clear: website publishers earn less and advertisers spend more,” the complaint adds.
