The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday by Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration, follows an antitrust lawsuit filed in 2020 against Google during former President Donald Trump’s term.
The US Department of Justice accused Alphabet Inc’s Google on Tuesday of abusing its dominant position in digital advertising, threatening to break up a key company at the heart of one of Silicon Valley’s most successful internet companies.
The government said Google should be forced to sell its (Ads Manager) unit, targeting an activity that generated about 12 percent of Google’s revenue in 2021, but also plays a vital role in the company’s search engine and overall sales.
“Google used illegal, exclusionary, and anticompetitive means to eliminate or severely reduce any threat to its dominance in digital advertising technologies,” the antitrust complaint states.
Google, whose ad business accounts for about 80 percent of its revenue, said the government “continues to make a flawed argument that will slow innovation, raise advertising fees and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow.”
The federal government has said its investigations and lawsuits into the tech giants’ activities are aimed at giving way to smaller competitors to a group of powerhouses that include Amazon.com, Facebook owner Meta Platforms and Apple Inc.
The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday by Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration, follows an antitrust lawsuit filed in 2020 against Google during former President Donald Trump’s term.
The lawsuit, which was filed in 2020, alleges violations of antitrust law by means of the company achieving or maintaining its dominant position through its monopoly on Internet search, and a trial is scheduled to begin in this regard in September.
Eight states joined the lawsuit filed on Tuesday, including California, where Google is headquartered.
