A collation of 50 state attorneys general have launched a new antitrust investigation into Google, reports The Washington Post. According to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the leader of the initiative, the investigation will initially focus on the company’s advertising business but is likely to expand to encompass other aspects of how the company conducts itself. “The facts will lead where the fact lead,” said Paxton on the steps of the Supreme Court.
At Monday’s press conference in front of the Supreme Court, Paxton said that Google “dominates all aspects of advertising on the internet and searching on the internet,” The Washington Post reported.
“We applaud the 50 state attorneys general for taking this unprecedented stand against Big Tech by uniting to investigate Google’s destruction of competition in search and advertising,” the Open Markets Institute said in a statement. “We haven’t seen a major monopolization case against a tech giant since Microsoft was sued in 1998. Today’s announcement marks the start of a new era.”
Running parallel to the states’ investigation, the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission are also probing the companies out of concerns they may be stifling competition in the industry. In its last quarterly earnings, Facebook disclosed that the FTC had opened an antitrust investigation into the company in June. The Justice Department announced its own broad antitrust review opened into the entirety of the tech sector last July as well.
For now, the probe will focus on Google’s dominance in digital advertising. But the attorneys general also hinted the investigation could become broader, extending to other businesses of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. They mentioned smartphones and online video. (Google owns YouTube.)
It’s important to note that this investigation isn’t a lawsuit yet. However, if Google is found to have acted in a way that broke the US’s antitrust rules, the company could be forced to divest itself of parts of its business, including YouTube. Alternatively, the company could be forced to change how its key money-making algorithms work.
