The Department of Justice is suing Google over the tech giant’s dominance in the digital advertising space, according to reports.
Sources familiar with the situation told Bloomberg that the DOJ is expected to file the lawsuit in court by the end of the week.
Google hasn’t released a statement regarding the rumored DOJ legal strategy, despite the fact that the company has previously refuted claims of monopolistic business practices. The business has previously mentioned firms like Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft as fierce rivals in the field of digital advertising in evidence and court documents.
The $278.6 billion digital advertising market in the United States and the $626.86 billion global digital advertising market are both dominated by Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
Google, owned by Alphabet Inc., holds the largest share of business in the United States’ $278.6 billion digital-ad market, as well as the $626.86 billion global digital advertising market.
The department’s alleged lawsuit will be the second against the internet giant since the department sued Google in 2020 over the latter’s search practices. Then-Attorney General William Barr said at the time that the company is the “gatekeeper of the Internet.”
“This lawsuit strikes at the heart of Google’s grip over the internet for millions of American consumers, advertisers, small businesses and entrepreneurs beholden to an unlawful monopolist,” Barr said.
In November, Google settled a legal challenge brought by dozens of states over the company’s use of location tracking. The company agreed to a $391.5 million settlement with the attorneys general of 40 states over allegations that it tracked users’ whereabouts even after they turned off the location monitoring feature on their phones.
“Consistent with improvements we’ve made in recent years, we have settled this investigation which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago,” Google spokesman José Castañeda said in a statement.
In addition, the Republican National Committee (RNC) filed an FEC complaint against Google in April, claiming that by using its spam filter for Gmail, the corporation was stifling GOP campaign emails. The RNC used a March 2022 report from the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University as evidence in its complaint.
