DOJ poised to sue Google over digital ad market dominance
Technology
Antitrust case will claim internet giant violated laws in acquiring/maintaining monopoly, Bloomberg
(Reuters) - US Justice Department plans to file a lawsuit against Alphabet Inc. s Google as early as Tuesday over its monopoly on the digital advertising industry, Bloomberg News reported quoting sources familiar with the situation.
The suit which would be Google s second federal antitrust case would claim that the internet giant violated antitrust laws in acquiring or maintaining its monopoly. The September trial date for the Justice Department lawsuit brought against Google in 2020 is focused on the company s search monopoly.
The case is anticipated to target Google s advertising division which generates around 80 percent of its income.
Publishers and advertisers have expressed dissatisfaction with Google s lack of transparency over the distribution of advertising funds especially the proportion that goes to publishers and the remainder to Google.
To help it become a dominating competitor in internet advertising, the tech giant made a number of acquisitions, including DoubleClick in 2008 and AdMob in 2009.
Google has previously contended that companies like Facebook, AT&T, Comcast and others were competitors in the ad tech ecosystem. While Google continues to dominate the industry by a wide margin, Insider Intelligence reports that its share of US digital ad revenue has been declining going from 36.7 percent in 2016 to 28.8 percent last year.
