Attorneys General Of 50 US States Initiate Investigation Into Google's Anti-Trust Practices In Online Advertising Market

In a significant development, Attorneys General for 50 US states have announced a probe into Google's anti-trust practices, focusing on whether the tech giant is overly dominant in the online advertising market and in internet searches.

According to CBS News on Monday, 50 state Attorneys General, led by Texas, have launched an investigation into Google's “potential monopolistic behavior”.

“This is a company that dominates all aspects of advertising on the internet, as they dominate the buyer, seller and auction side,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was quoted as saying.

“If advertising costs are higher, advertisers pay more, and ultimately that's passed on to consumers,” he added.

It may be recalled that in March this year, European Union's anti-trust regulators had fined Google 1.49 billion euros (USD 1.7 billion) for abusing its dominance in the online search market by blocking rivals.

Google has abused its market dominance by imposing a number of restrictive clauses in contracts with third-party websites which prevented Google's rivals from placing their search adverts on these websites, according to a European Commission (EC) statement.

The Commission had stated that the fine which is equivalent to 1.29% of Google's turnover in 2018 took into account the duration and gravity of the infringement.

In June this year, the US Department of Justice stated that it plans to open a case against Google for potential anti-trust violations.

This comes at a time when there's a debate whether large technology companies should be broken up.

Incidentally, a separate group of US states had announced an investigation into Facebook's dominance recently.

The Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Congress are also conducting probes into both Facebook and Google.

In 2013, Google had stated that it would change some practices after it agreed to a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission. The FTC had been concerned that some of Google's business practices could stifle competition.

In 2010, the company had received an anti-trust complaint from the European Commission regarding the ranking of shopping search results and ads, which resulted in Google being fined USD 2.7 billion in 2017.