Google is facing three separate antitrust lawsuits from the Department of Justice and two different state coalitions. One month after the Texas v. Google lawsuit was filed, Google finally decided to respond to the allegations.
The state attorneys general who brought the lawsuit against Google claim that the company maintains dominance in the online ad market “through an array of exclusionary tactics, including an unlawful agreement with Facebook, its largest potential competitive threat, to manipulate advertising auctions.”
The censorious search engine giant Google attempted to call the allegations in the lawsuit, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, simply “wrong” in a Public Policy blog post.
“AG Paxton tries to paint Google’s involvement in this industry as nefarious. The opposite is true. Unlike some B2B companies in this space, a consumer internet company like Google has an incentive to maintain a positive user experience and a sustainable internet that works for all—consumers, advertisers and publishers,” said Google in its blog post.
Google called several of the allegations in the lawsuit “Myth[s],” and presented its own side as “Fact.” For example, the blog post said, “Myth: Google ‘dominates the online advertising landscape for image-based web display ads.’ Fact: The ad tech industry is incredibly crowded and competitive.”
Google also argued that “AG Paxton inaccurately claims that we manipulate the Open Bidding auction in [Facebook Audience Network’s] favor. We absolutely don’t. FAN must make the highest bid to win a given impression. If another eligible network or exchange bids higher, they win the auction.”
The court date for the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Google has been set for September 12, 2023, and it is possible that both the DOJ and Texas cases could be merged into one.
Liberal Google critic Dr. Robert Epstein called Google a “monopoly” in an article for USA Today. He said that Google and Facebook both pose “grave threats to democracy and human freedom.”
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