DOJ Sues Google for Monopoly on Advertising Technologies

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and eight states sued Google claiming that the internet giant had illegally created a monopoly over the online advertising business. Google has been sued five times since 2020 for various antitrust violations. 

Google recently bought out competitors and many companies in the advertising business and began to intentionally direct current and potential customers to their products. When asked about Google’s antitrust violations, the DOJ asserted that Google has “corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry” and “Google uses its dominion over digital advertising technology to funnel more transactions to its own ad tech products where it extracts inflated fees to line its own pockets.”

Litigation is expected to drag on for quite some time, but the federal prosecutor made a big move by asking a federal judge to force Google to break up its “advertising monopoly” from the rest of the company. This would be an incredibly significant hit for Google’s revenue stream considering that 80% of its revenue comes from its advertising business, which totals around $209 billion annually. 

Bloomberg made an interesting remark about how this marks the first time since the 80s – when the DOJ completely restructured Bell Telecommunications over monopoly allegations – that the DOJ has pursued a company of this size and power. 

Across all digital media in the US, Google controls nearly 30% of it. Meta is number two in the US for all digital media, and they control just under 20%. Finally, Amazon is the third largest in the country and they control 11%. Google made a statement based on this evidence that they have plenty of competition.

It will be interesting to see in the coming months if the tech giant gets disbanded or if Google can convince a judge that they don’t have a monopoly on the industry.

By Avner Belsky