The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Google for establishing an illegal monopoly over web ad technology, following a previous ruling that found Google had an illegal monopoly in the search engine market in the United States.
Yesterday, during the hearing in the federal judge’s court in Alexandria, Virginia, USA, Google’s lawyer, along with the lawyers of the American states and the Department of Justice, presented their arguments.
Government regulators accuse Google of illegally monopolizing web advertising technology and creating software that matches advertisers and publishers.
Because of Google’s dominance in the transfer of funds for buying and selling ads on such software, the company makes 36 cents on every dollar it makes. The court also accused Google of controlling the advertising exchange market that connects advertisers and buyers.
The US Department of Justice lawyer argued that even if it had been a monopoly, it would have been fine, but here, a row of monopolies has been set up.
Google’s lawyer said, “The government’s case is based on the Internet of the past when desktop computers ruled, and Internet users carefully typed a website address into a URL field. Today, the advertiser’s tendency is more towards social media companies like TikTok or streaming TV services.”
Earlier, the Washington, DC court faced a major defeat against Google in the case of an illegal monopoly on the search engine.
In its ruling, the court accused Google of paying companies like Apple hundreds of billions of dollars annually to maintain its monopoly on search engines so that when consumers buy iPhones or other gadgets from these companies, their default search engine should be Google.
