Google Hit With Antitrust Lawsuit Brought By 36 States: What It Means

Google has been hit with an Antitrust lawsuit by 36 states and the District of Columbia. The lawsuit accuses Google of abusing its market power to stifle competitors in order to force consumers into in-app payments that grant google hefty cuts. Google’s competitor, Yelp, is among those who have filed suit against Google for this behavior. Attorney General Letitia James from New York is leading the bipartisan coalition which represents 36 U.S. states including California, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Washington.

This lawsuit is the second major antitrust suit brought against Google in recent months. The first, which was filed by a group of states and Google’s competitors who are all accusing google of using unfair tactics to favor its own products over theirs, has been ongoing since 2017. Google denies these allegations.

The plaintiffs hope that this new suit will have more success than their last because it focuses on issues like consumer harm rather than competition law violations and offers strong evidence for Google’s illegal maneuvers, such as emails from CEO Eric Schmidt about plans to “clobber” enemies with Android Market exclusivity deals or withholding search ads from Amazon unless they adopt Google Shopping Express – among other charges made public Wednesday morning when the case was announced at a conference on globalization and technology hosted by the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C.

Antitrust lawsuit on Google, What it Means:

Google has been hit with a lawsuit by 36 states and the District of Columbia that accuses Google of abusing its market power to stifle competitors through unfair tactics such as withholding search ads from Amazon. Unless they adopt google shopping express or clobbering enemies with android deals among other charges made public on Wednesday when the case was announced at a conference on globalization and technology hosted by the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C.

This is a second major antitrust suit against google which began early last year aimed at uncovering google’s alleged violations of competition law rather than issues like consumer harm highlighted in recent months filing, but plaintiffs hope more success because focused on former fling. Google has denied the allegations, and plaintiffs hope it will have better luck this time because the new suit focuses on Google’s alleged actions aimed at harming consumers rather than investigating google for unfair competition laws violations like the other lawsuit that is still ongoing.

A bipartisan coalition of 37 state attorneys general accused Google of using its monopoly to stifle competitors and forcing consumers into in-app payments for the company.

“With this suit, we seek to set innovation free from the threat that a major player will abuse its market power as it attempts to monopolize platforms,” Attorney General Letitia James said in a press release. “Through illegal conduct, the company has ensured that hundreds of millions of Android users turn to Google exclusively for applications they may choose to download onto their phones and tablets. To break up this monopoly, in a press release, – James said that through with its illegal conduct Google ensures all that it’s the attendant hundreds of consumer millions harms of – Android we users are turning asking them court for on applications behalf they of may our choose partners across to America download. For swift action under Sherman Act Sections 1 and 2 (or Section 3).

In the new lawsuit, which is below, states say that Google uses misleading security warnings to keep people from using apps outside the Google Play Store. But it looks like the real reason they are suing is that Google collects fees from app developers on Android phones.

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine convened a bipartisan coalition of 36 U.S. States and filed an antitrust lawsuit this morning against Google for the company’s alleged use of anticompetitive tactics to stifle rivals and lock app developers and consumers into its own payment processing system, impeding innovation in that industry.

Along with this, Trump also filed a lawsuit against all social media sites including Google.

Read the entire report here:

State AGs vs. Google by TechCrunch