All the new antitrust issues in the US for Google (which plots with Facebook)
Ten US states have accused Google of monopolizing advertising technology. The latest antitrust lawsuit focuses on the company's behavior with the DoubleClick advertising platform
A week that started with a crash of all services and ended with a lawsuit for Big G.
A group of ten Republican-led states has filed an antitrust action against Google accusing the search engine giant of abusing its dominant position in the online advertising industry.
Google is also accused of colluding with Facebook to take out the competition. According to the indictment, the two main players in online advertising have entered into an illegal secret pact in 2018 to divide the ad market on websites and apps.
The new offensive comes two months after the Justice Department, flanked by 11 states, accused Google of abuse of dominance.
On Monday, Google recorded a planetary crash of all services (from YouTube to Drive to Gmail and Meet) between 12.55 and 13.50 Italian. The company dismissed the incident with an "out of memory" problem.
All the details.
ANTITRUST ACTION AGAINST GOOGLE
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced a multi-state lawsuit against Google over the online search giant's alleged "anti-competitive conduct" in the online advertising industry.
"Google has repeatedly used its monopoly power to control prices and colluded to rig (online advertising) auctions in a serious violation of the law."
WHAT ARE THE STATES
Paxton filed the lawsuit with other Republican attorneys general from Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota and Utah.
AT THE CENTER OF THE ACCUSATION THE PLATFORM FOR THE PURCHASE OF ADVERTISING SPACES
The denunciation of the republican states focuses in particular on DoubleClick, the Google platform for buying and selling advertising spaces, a platform that manages the sale and placement on the web of large advertising packages.
In particular, he cites the company's role in various stages of the complex and often invisible chain of profits between online publishers and advertisers, allowing for substantial control over how content is monetized. In 2008, Google acquired DoubleClick software, which is used to buy and sell ads on the web.
Texas argues that the company dominates the paths through which an advertisement arrives from the agency that produces it on a web page or mobile app.
THE DOUBLE ROLE OF GOOGLE IN THE ANTITRUST CASE
According to the complaint, Google controls 90% of the market for the technology tools used by publishers to sell their advertisements online. For the prosecution, Google uses that power, coupled with the fact that it sells technology to companies that buy advertising, to funnel transactions to their own trading platform.
In the ad technology marketplace that brings together Google and a huge universe of online advertisers and publishers, the company controls access to advertisers who place ads on its dominant search platform. Google also runs the auction process for advertisers to serve ads on a publisher's site.
Because Google sells technology to both buyers and sellers of advertising, and at the same time manages the trading platform, the role is considered to be that of a baseball pitcher who is also a catcher and referee.
COLLUSION WITH FACEBOOK?
And here another tech giant comes into play. In 2017 Facebook advocated an alternative technology to DoubleClick, which would have weakened Google's ability to channel transactions through its market by making the social network a potential rival. But Facebook, states accuse, dropped that idea after Google offered it "special auction access" by giving Facebook preferential treatment.
According to the indictment, the two web giants colluded to set prices and divide the mobile advertising market between them.
THE REACTION OF MEDIA GROUPS
Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, a commercial body representing the likes of the New York Times, Washington Post, News Corp and CNBC , called the details of the Google-Facebook deal "disturbing". According to Kint, the two companies were “essentially stealing money from publishers. "
THE POSITION OF THE COLOSSUS OF MENLO PARK
Facebook is however not listed as a defendant in the lawsuit. But also for the giant founded by Mark Zuckerberg there is no shortage of problems. In early December, the Federal Trade Commission and 48 attorneys general accused Facebook of unfair and monopolistic practices , calling for the divestiture of WhatsApp and Instagram.
THE REPLY OF BIG G ON THE ANTITRUST DOSSIER
Google refuted the allegations in a statement, calling the lawsuit entirely without merit.
“Prices of online advertising have fallen over the last decade – Google reported in a statement – and prices for advertising technology are also falling. Google's prices for this technology are below the industry average. These are the hallmarks of a highly competitive industry ".
SHOT TO THE HEART OF GOOGLE BUSINESS
However, the complaint goes to the heart of Google's business: the digital ads that generate nearly all of its revenue, as well as all the resources its parent company, Alphabet Inc., depends on to finance a number of technology projects.
During the first nine months of this year, Google's ad sales totaled nearly $ 101 billion, or 86% of its total revenue.
TOGETHER WITH THE CASE BROUGHT BY THE DEPARTMENT OF JUDGMENT
Paxton's move comes after the U.S. Department of Justice sued Google in October for abusing its domain in online search and advertising, the government's most significant attempt to support competition since its historic case against Microsoft. two decades ago.
THE BIG TECH BATTLE, A POLITICAL QUESTION
The decision by Republican states to launch their own lawsuit rather than including Democrat-led states, which were also involved in building the case, seems to indicate political will to gain the spotlight in the Trump administration's final weeks for actions of relief against Big Tech.
A bipartisan group of attorneys general led by Phil Weiser of Colorado was also preparing a separate lawsuit today focusing on Google's dominant position in the web search industry, according to the Financial Times .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/tutte-le-nuove-grane-antitrust-negli-usa-per-google-che-trama-con-facebook/ on Thu, 17 Dec 2020 15:13:53 +0000.