Fifty attorneys general from US states and territories signed onto an antitrust investigation into Google this week. The development places even more pressure on the influential tech firm that is already facing intense government scrutiny over its market dominance.
The bipartisan probe is being led by Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton from Texas and will focus primarily on Google’s advertising and search businesses. However, in remarks given Monday, the attorneys general implied that they might expand the investigation in the future.
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Attorneys general from California and Alabama are the only two states staying out of the probe.
A press conference took place earlier this week in front of the Supreme Court, where Paxton said that Google “dominates all aspects of advertising on the internet and searching on the internet.” He added:
“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.”1
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Running alongside the states’ investigation, the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission are also probing companies out of concerns they may be suffocating competition in the industry. In its last quarterly earnings, Facebook announced that in June the FTC had opened an antitrust investigation into the company. In July, the Justice Department announced its own widespread antitrust review opened into the entirety of the tech sector as well.
DOJ’s antitrust head Makan Delrahim told reporters in August that the Department was working alongside the state attorneys general to investigate possible antitrust violations in the tech sectors.
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Independently, New York’s Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, announced a similar investigation last Friday into whether Facebook “endangered consumer data, reduced the quality of consumers’ choices, or increased the price of advertising.” Joining her are attorneys general from Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and the District of Columbia. James said last week:
“Even the largest social media platform in the world must follow the law and respect consumers. I am proud to be leading a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general in investigating whether Facebook has stifled competition and put users at risk.”1
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In 2017, Missouri’s former state attorney general, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) was one of the first to initiate an antitrust investigation into Google. Hawley has brought the same tech mistrust into the halls of Congress where he has sponsored several bills directed at regulating the industry. He all leads the Republican party’s claims that large tech platforms censor conservative speech, telling Bloomberg:
“I’m really, really pleased by this news that so many states are going to stand together and essentially join Missouri in its efforts, now two years old, to investigate Google.”1
Google has also faced antitrust pressures from regulators in Europe. In March, the search giant was hit with a $1.7 billion fine from the European Commission for “abusive” online ad practices. The commission said Google exploited its dominance by restricting its rivals from placing their search ads on third-party websites.
Last year, the EU’s executive arm fined Google a record $5 billion for unfair business practices around Android, its mobile operating system. The investigation focused on Google’s deals with phone manufacturers, requiring them to preload specific Google apps and services onto Android phones.
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On Monday, Google’s rivals praised the move by state attorneys general to investigate the search giant. Yelp’s Luther Lowe, senior vice president of public policy, wrote:
“It is heartening to see the news today that nearly every state attorney general in the country has joined a historic and bipartisan investigation into these illegal and anticompetitive practices. Yelp will continue to assist with this investigation in whatever way we can.”1
