By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 10-20-20
The Justice Department filed its expected antitrust lawsuit against Google Tuesday (Oct. 20), joined by 11 states attorneys general. It called the company an illegal monopoly and vowed to “remedy the competitive harms.”
The states are Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, South Carolina, and Texas.
Justice likened the suit to the iconic antitrust actions against AT&T and Microsoft.
Justice charges Google with “unlawfully maintaining monopolies through anticompetitive and exclusionary practices in the search and search advertising markets,” including by using ad revenues to anticompetitively pay phone manufacturers, carriers and others to keep Google as their default search engine.
“Today’s lawsuit by the Department of Justice is deeply flawed,” said a Google spokesperson. » Read More