The United States Justice of Justice, along with eight states, have officially filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google on Tuesday that seeks to breakup the company’s online ad business, and comes more than two years following another suit against the search engine company.
The suit from two years ago came from the agency and a group of state attorney generals that alleged that Google’s search and search advertising businesses violate U.S. antitrust laws, and now the Justice Department’s alleges that Google’s suite of online advertising tools prevents competitors from entering the online advertising market, as well as blocking publishers from monetizing their own content
According to Yahoo Finance, the DOJ says that Google is illegally using, or trying to use, its monopoly power, and the company should be required to divest a host of entities that allow it to carry out the allegedly offending behavior.
“Google’s anticompetitive behavior has raised barriers to entry to artificially high levels, forced key competitors to abandon the market for ad tech tools, dissuaded potential competitors from joining the market, and left Google’s few remaining competitors marginalized and unfairly disadvantaged,” the complaint details, per the report.
“Google has thwarted meaningful competition and deterred innovation in the digital advertising industry, taken supra-competitive profits for itself, and prevented the free market from functioning fairly to support the interests of the advertisers and publishers who make today’s powerful internet possible.”
