U.S. DOJ set to sue Google over dominance in digital ads -Bloomberg

UPDATE (Jan 25, 2023): The Justice Department and 8 states sue Google over dominance in ad tech

The United States Department of Justice is set to sue tech giant Google as soon as today over its dominance in the advertising industry, sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.

The lawsuit will be filed before the end of this week, they added. The Justice Department also filed an antitrust lawsuit against the Alphabet-owned company in 2020 over its dominance in search, and the trial will take place this September.

The new lawsuit will reportedly target Google’s ad business, which accounts for around 80% of its total revenue. The company mainly generates revenue by connecting advertisers with users of websites, newspapers and other companies.

However, it has long been under fire by advertisers and website owners for not being very transparent about how it distributes the ad revenue to advertisers and itself.

In order to strengthen its ad business, the company also made many acquisitions before. It acquired DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in 2008, and AdMob for $750 million the next year, which provided significant contributions to its rise to the top of the ad industry.

But it previously said that there was a competition in the advertising industry with companies like Meta, Comcast and AT&T.

The news comes at a time when the tech giant is already being scrutinized by authorities in various countries, including India, the United States, the United Kingdom and Mexico. It was also fined $4.13B by the EU last September for abusing its dominance and harming competition.

The report also arrives just days after Google’s parent Alphabet announced that it would lay off 12,000 employees, or 6% of its workforce.