In the latest lawsuit filed on Thursday, attorneys general from 35 states accused Google of using anti-competitive practices to maintain its monopoly on search and advertising. Before these lawsuits, Google’s competitors, legislators, and activists had been criticizing Google and Facebook. And other big technology companies, accusing these big companies of using anti-competitive methods for years to maintain their monopoly position.

The three antitrust lawsuits against Google were initiated by state and federal agencies, and their perspectives are also slightly different. These lawsuits may last for several years, and over time, state-level litigation may be combined with federal-level litigation

Sally Hubbard, Director of executive strategy at the Open Markets Institute and author of “Monopolies Suck”, believes that these lawsuits may eventually lead to Google being split into several smaller companies.

He said, “I don’t think this is a battle related to consumer rights, this is a battle related to whether Google is illegal.”

Google manipulation search lawsuit

This latest lawsuit is similar to a lawsuit initiated by the US Department of Justice in October, focusing on Google’s search business. It claims that Google uses three forms of anti-competitive behavior to maintain its monopoly on its search business and advertising.

This anti-competitive behavior including Apple, wait for competitors to reach an agreement to set Google as the default search engine, uses its dominant search advertising marketing tool to thwart market competitors, and displays search results that are unfavorable to specialized search platforms, such as travel or restaurants.

According to the report, Google uses these specialized search platforms to rely on it to treat them differently from other business players, thereby limiting their ability to acquire customers.

Although this lawsuit, like the Department of Justice lawsuit, is focused on the search business and advertising monopoly, this state-level lawsuit is built based on the federal Department of Justice lawsuit and has a broader scope than the Department of Justice lawsuit.

The complaint reads: “The lawsuit provides more evidence of Google’s extensive anti-competitive behavior, which has caused harm to consumers, advertisers, and competition.”

Google responded to the lawsuit in a blog post by Adam Cohen, its director of economic policy.

The post said that changes to the Google search engine will hurt the interests of consumers.

The post read: “This lawsuit suggests that we should not work hard to make search better, but on the contrary, it should become more useless for users.” “This lawsuit calls for changes to the design of Google Search and requires us to highlight Online middlemen replace direct contact with companies.”

This lawsuit received the support of state attorneys general from both parties, while the federal Justice Department’s lawsuit was only supported by state attorneys general from the Republican Party.

“Google is at the crossroads of many of our digital economy. It uses its advantages to illegally suppress competitors, monitors almost every aspect of our digital life, and profit billions of dollars from it,” said the Democrat New York President who helped lead this lawsuit.

Attorney General of New York Letitia James said “This lawsuit is good news for the digital media industry”

In a statement, Jason Kint, chief executive of Digital Content Next, a digital media industry association, said, “The lawsuit highlights the widespread concerns of both parties about Google’s anti-competitive behavior. We are pleased to see that almost every Every state is stepping up its crackdown on Google’s anti-competitive practices. These actions by Google are designed to consolidate Google’s dominant position and sacrifice the interests of publishers, advertisers, and consumers.”

Google advertising technology monopoly lawsuit

Another latest lawsuit was initiated by 10 Republican state attorneys general yesterday. Compared with the lawsuit mentioned above, this lawsuit mainly accuses Google of anti-competitive behavior in advertising technology.

The Texas Attorney General and Republican Ken Paxton led the investigation against Google. Paxton tweeted hours before the lawsuit video was posted on, announcing the lawsuit.

He said in the video: “Google has repeatedly used its monopoly power to control pricing, conduct market conspiracy, and manipulate auctions behind the scenes. This is a serious violation of the law.”

This lawsuit accuses Google of taking a variety of anti-competitive behaviors to establish and maintain its monopoly in the digital advertising market and keep competitors out.

It also accused Google and Facebook of agreeing to not compete with each other illegally. This may be a particularly damaging charge for the two companies-Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act prohibits collusion between companies in this way, and it is often easier to produce evidence in court in such cases.

The lawsuit was initiated by the Republican attorneys general of Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Kentucky, and Texas.

The lawsuit states, “In addition to representing buyers and sellers of online advertising, Google also operates the largest digital exchange. In this electronic trading market, Google plays the roles of bowler, batter, and referee at the same time.”

This is similar to the New York Stock Exchange, which controls the buying and selling of stocks.

Hubbard said, “If the market is functioning normally, some information should not be obtained by Google. In other industries, this situation cannot be tolerated.”

Google spokesperson Julie McAlister stated to the outside world that “Paxton’s Attorney General’s proposition on advertising technology is worthless” and Google “will defend itself strongly in court and will not accept it. His baseless accusation.”

This is the first lawsuit to focus on Google’s dominance in advertising technology.

Last year, Google received nearly 162 billion US dollars in revenue, most of which came from advertising. According to relevant data, Google controls nearly a third of digital advertising spending in the United States.

Some media sources said that Google’s advertising tools dominate all aspects of advertising production, allowing it to maintain its dominant position.

These media professionals also explained in detail the operation of Google’s advertising technology and the reasons why publishers and competitors have been complaining about Google’s advertising technology

Federal antitrust litigation

In addition to the previous two antitrust lawsuits initiated by the state attorney general, the federal level took similar legal actions as early as October this year.

At that time, the U.S. Department of Justice and 11 states jointly initiated a lawsuit against Google, accusing the company of using its dominant position in the search field to maintain its monopoly in multiple fields, including advertising.

The lawsuit also claimed that Google paid some companies to exclude other competitors in order to maintain its leading position

For example, Google pays Apple billions of dollars each year to make its search engine a default search engine for the Safari browser.

The US Department of Justice said that Google monopolized the US search market and controlled 90% of the market. Google search is free in form-but in fact, consumers pay for the service in the form of providing personal data to Google-the government’s antitrust lawsuit is based on the idea that Google’s monopoly position leads to reduced competition, and thus lead to a decline in the quality of products and services.

Google is not the only major technology company facing scrutiny by government regulators.

Earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and 48 states also launched a lawsuit against Facebook, claiming that its acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp harmed consumers and was anti-competitive.

Before the lawsuit, the Democrats submitted a 400-page report to the House Judicial Antitrust Committee. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are the central topics of this report.

The report believes that the four largest technology companies in the world have abused their powers as guardians of the industry, and new regulations should be established to restrict these large companies

The introduction of the report states: “Simply put, those start-ups that were once vigorous, not optimistic, but brave to challenge the status quo, have now become the kind of monopoly enterprises we have seen in the era of oil and railway tycoons .”

In the end

Whether these lawsuits will bring about meaningful changes remains to be seen. As we all know, it is difficult to win antitrust cases. Some argue that it is difficult to prove that the dominance of these big technology companies actually harms consumers.

For example, Google provides a powerful search tool and simplifies the digital advertising market, which has greatly benefited many users.

In any case, the aforementioned antitrust lawsuits show that the US government at least believes there is an opportunity for change.

The last thing to say is that such litigation generally does not result soon. Government vs Microsoft prosecution started in 1998 and lasted several years.

The situation now is very different from then and it is difficult to compare. Given the huge role these big technology companies play in today’s life, the scale of the above-mentioned several lawsuits will be larger and more complicated.

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