Nine state attorney generals led by Texas Republican Ken Paxton have filed a lawsuit aimed squarely at Google’s most profitable lines of business.
The filing alleges the tech giant employed anticompetitive practices to maximize profits from online advertising. It is the latest legal effort to rein in Big Tech. (Washington Post)
Online display advertising is expected to generate $42 billion in revenue for Google this year, capturing a third of all digital ad spending, according to an October projection from the firm eMarketer. Google’s vast reach led Texas and other state attorneys general to conclude in their lawsuit that the tech giant essentially had built the “largest electronic trading market in existence,” operating ad systems that are not unlike trades on a stock exchange.
In that analogy, Texas said Google essentially acted as both the financial broker and the stock trading floor itself, giving it an unfair advantage over competing ad services and an unrivaled store of data from which to refine targeted advertisements. The attorneys general said the arrangement ultimately harmed average Americans, as the revenue Google generated from those ads amounted to a “monopoly tax” on popular online sites and services, which passed those costs down to American consumers.
“The actions harm every person in America,” Paxton said in a prerecorded video statement.
Google immediately sought to rebut Paxton’s case as “meritless,” stressing in a statement that it will “strongly defend ourselves from his baseless claims in court.”
The post Texas Spearheads Legal Challenge Striking at the Heart of Google appeared first on American Action News.
from American Action News https://ift.tt/2KwBd7E
https://ift.tt/eA8V8J