Google is facing a new multi-state lawsuit, led by Texas, that accuses the company of abusing its “monopolistic power”, the latest in a slew of major legal efforts to rein in big tech.
In a video announcing the suit on Wednesday, the Texas attorney generalcharged Google with engaging in anticompetitive behavior, particularly in the online advertising market. Texas argues that the company dominates the pathways by which an advertisement gets from the agency that produces it on to a web page or mobile app.
“Google repeatedly used its monopolistic power to control pricing [and] engage in market collusions to rig auctions in a tremendous violation of justice,” Ken Paxton said.
“It isn’t fair that Google effectively eliminated its competition and crowned itself the head of online advertising. Let me put it this way: if the free market was a baseball game, Google positioned itself as the pitcher, the batter and the umpire.”
The nine states that joined Texas are Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, South Dakota, North Dakota, Utah and Idaho.
The Texas lawsuit will be the fourth in a series of federal and state lawsuits targeting alleged bad behavior by America’s major internet platforms, which have grown from startups to omnipresent titans in the past two decades.
In October, the US justice department filed a lawsuit accusing the tech company of abusing its position to maintain an illegal monopoly over search and advertising.
“Two decades ago, Google became the darling of Silicon Valley as a scrappy startup with an innovative way to search the emerging internet. That Google is long gone,” the suit alleged.
Paxton joined that justice department lawsuit in October.
Meanwhile, two separate lawsuits brought last week by the US Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of 48 states and districts has targeted Facebook, accusing the social media giant of anticompetitive behavior and ultimately calling for its breakup.
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