Justice Department files antitrust lawsuit against Google over digital advertising

(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department and eight other states filed a historic antitrust lawsuit Tuesday targeting Google over what they allege is the Big Tech giant’s monopoly over the online advertising market.

The lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, aims to have Google’s dominance in the online ad marketplace broken up by having a court compel the company to divest its Google Ad Manager suite. They also seek an order from the court enjoining Google from further engaging in any of the anticompetitive practices outlined in their lawsuit.

“Having inserted itself into all aspects of the digital advertising marketplace, Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies,” according to the lawsuit. “The United States and Plaintiff States bring this action for violations of the Sherman Act to halt Google’s anticompetitive scheme, unwind Google’s monopolistic grip on the market, and restore competition to digital advertising.”

DOJ is joined in the lawsuit by California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Virginia.

“Competition in the ad tech space is broken, for reasons that were neither accidental nor inevitable,” the DOJ wrote in the lawsuit. “One industry behemoth, Google, has corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers, and brokers, to facilitate digital advertising.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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