DOJ To File Antitrust Suit Against Google Alleging Digital Ad Monopoly, Report Says

The Department of Justice The DOJ is apparently preparing to sue Google over the tech behemoth’s dominance in the digital advertising space.

Sources familiar with the preparations said that the DOJ will file the lawsuit before the end of this week. Bloomberg. This will be the latest of a series of antitrust lawsuits brought against the company by state and federal government agencies.

Google has not yet made a statement regarding the DOJ’s reported legal maneuver. However, the company has denied any monopolistic business practices. In past testimony and court filings, Google has identified companies like Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and others as strong competitors within the digital advertising space.

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 top slot in the $626.86 billion global digital ad market.

The DOJ’s reported lawsuit will follow previous legal action taken against the tech giant in 2020 — when the department sued Google over the company’s search practices.

William Barr, then-Attorney General, stated at the time that Google was 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,” He said.

Google launched in November settled a legal challenge brought by dozens of states over the company’s use of location tracking. Google agreed to a $391.5 million settlement with the attorneys general of 40 states that said the company continued to monitor the people’s movements even after turning off their phones’ location tracking feature.

“Consistent with improvements we’ve made in recent years, we have settled this investigation which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago,” Google spokesman José Castañeda said in a statement.

Google is currently facing claims of political bias against Republicans, in addition to the antitrust court challenges. The Republican National Committee, (RNC) filed FEC filed an April complaint against Google alleging that it suppressed GOP campaign emails using its spam filter in Gmail.

The RNC complained about a March 2022 incident. study by North Carolina State University’s Department of Computer Science researchers.

“The study’s findings are shocking,” The complaint said. “All three services displayed some disparity, with Outlook marking Democrat emails as spam approximately 27% more than Republican emails, and Yahoo marking Democrat emails as spam approximately 14% more. In comparison, however, Google’s Gmail truly stands apart, as it marked Republican emails as spam at more than an 820% higher rate than it marked emails from Democrat candidates.”

The Federal Election Commission announced earlier this month that it found the allegations against Google’s Gmail to be unfounded.

“Though the NCSU Study appears to demonstrate a disparate impact from Google’s spam filter, it explicitly states that its authors have ‘no reason to believe that there were deliberate attempts from these email services to create these biases to influence the voters,’” The FEC sent a letter addressing Google.