DOJ targets Google over online ad market dominance

The Department of Justice filed its second antitrust lawsuit in two years against Google, focusing on the company’s online ad business. The suit accuses the company of illegally engaging in monopolistic behavior.

“Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies,” the government said in its antitrust complaint.

Google has “corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry” by seizing control of tools and inserting “itself into all aspects of the digital advertising marketplace,” the complaint further read.

Though Google is the market leader, its total US digital ad income has been declining It has fallen from 36.7% in 2016 to 28.8% in 2022, per Insider Intelligence.

Notably, it is the first major big tech lawsuit filed under the Biden administration and seeks to break up the company’s ad business.

In October 2020, the department filed a lawsuit and accused the company blocked competitors by alleged illegal means to maintain its dominance with its monopoly in online search. A trial is scheduled for September.