A new US antitrust case claims that Google has monopolised digital advertising by unlawfully excluding its competitors. It could change ad tech and the entire internet, says a senior lecturer of law from the University of Queensland.
FILE - The Google logo at their offices in Granary Square, in London, on Nov. 1, 2018. , which last year brought in more than US$200 billion. The US Department of Justice, along with 17 states, claims Google ’s parent company, Alphabet , has monopolised multiple digital advertising technology products by neutralising or eliminating its competitors. The department says this"has caused great harm to online publishers and advertisers and American consumers".
In August 2024, a United States court ruled Google had illegally maintained its monopoly on internet search. Because the trial is only just beginning, many aspects of the case are not yet known. Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter says this has had – and continues to have – the effect of"driving out rivals, diminishing competition, inflating advertising costs, reducing revenues for news publishers and content creators, snuffing out innovation, and harming the exchange of information and ideas in the public sphere".
More than 20 years ago, the European Commission successfully prosecuted Microsoft for violating competition law. This was followed by other successful anticompetition law cases. For example, in 2017, the commission fined Google more than €2.4 billion for abusing its dominant position as a search engine.
But these two cases against Google are not the only ones US authorities are pursuing against big tech.
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