Ten US states have brought a lawsuit against Google, accusing the search giant of “anti-competitive conduct” in the online advertising industry, including a deal to manipulate sales with rival Facebook.
In a video announcing the suit on Wednesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton charged Google with engaging in anticompetitive behavior, particularly in the online advertising market.
Texas argued that the company dominated the pathways by which an advertisement gets from the agency that produces it on to a web page or mobile app.
The nine states that joined Texas are Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, South Dakota, North Dakota, Utah and Idaho.
The lawsuit seeks monetary damages from Google and asks the court to enact “structural relief to restore competitive conditions in the relevant markets”.
The Texas lawsuit will be the fourth in a series of federal and state lawsuits targeting alleged bad behavior by America’s major internet platforms, which have grown from startups to omnipresent titans in the past two decades.
