Antitrust Suit Against Google Returns To Texas

On Monday, a US judicial panel announced that Texas’ antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet’s Google would be returned to the federal court in Texas, the location of its initial filing.

According to Reuters, the case was transferred to a federal court in New York in mid-2021 at the request of Google, where other cases involving advertising technology were being heard.

The lawsuit asserts that Google has violated antitrust laws by acquiring or maintaining a monopoly in various aspects of the online advertising market. It also accuses Google of engaging in illegal tying arrangements between its ad products, which forced publishers to use additional Google tools if they wanted to operate on its ad exchange.

Read more: Google Loses Bid To Dismiss Advertising Antitrust Case

The lawsuit claims that Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick in 2008 resulted in a significant shift in the company’s role as a middleman, leading to the extraction of payments from various stages of the online ad-buying process.

The complaint alleges that Google and Facebook, referred to as a “co-conspirator,” engaged in anti-competitive behavior by unlawfully agreeing to manipulate auctions and prices. The complaint states that when Facebook announced plans to compete with Google in ad tech in 2017, Google allegedly made a deal to limit the competition. As part of this alleged arrangement, Google offered Facebook certain benefits in auctions for mobile app advertising inventory.