Bloomberg reports that the US Justice Department (DOJ) is going to file a lawsuit against Google over its monopoly of the digital advertising market. Currently, the search engine giant has the biggest share of the $278.6 billion digital ad market in the United States and the $626.86 billion global digital ad market.
Google’s digital advertising business offers an ad-buying service for marketers and an ad-selling one for publishers. It also allows trading exchange for marketers and publishers to complete transactions in lightning-fast auctions.
Research firm EMarketer estimates that Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc.’s ad business would generate $73.8 billion in US digital ad revenue in 2023.
Google denies monopoly allegations and says the online advertising market is crowded
DOJ has already sued the company over its search business using exclusive distribution deals with wireless carriers and phone makers to lock out competitors like its multi-billion-dollar annual payments to Apple for keeping Google Search as the default search engine on iOS, over $8 billion per year allegedly.
As per the report, Justice Department will file its second lawsuit against the tech giant this week for controlling most of the technology used to buy, sell and serve online advertising which will add to its existing cases.
The lawsuit would also be the fifth major case in the US challenging the company’s business practices. State attorneys general have filed three separate suits against Google, alleging it dominates the markets for online search, advertising technoloy and apps on the Android mobile platform in violation of antitrust laws.
However, the tech giant denied monopoly allegations and claimed that the digital advertising market is competitive.
Google has argued that the market for online advertising is a crowded and competitive one. In court filings and congressional testimony, the company has noted its rivals include other major players in the ad tech market such as Amazon.com Inc., Meta Platforms Inc. and Microsoft Corp.
It is also reported that Apple is finally developing its own search engine to boot off Google’s services from its mobile operating system, along with other services.
