Attorneys General from 48 US states, the district of Columbia and the territory of Puerto Rico on Monday announced that an anti-trust investigation into Google would take place.
In a statement to the press at the US Supreme Court, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said, “The Internet is not free. This is a company that dominates all aspects of advertising on the Internet and searching on the Internet as they dominate the buyer side, the seller side, the auction side and even the video side with YouTube.”
New York State Attorney General Letitia James said, “Google’s control over nearly every aspect of our lives has placed the company at the centre of our digital economy. But it doesn’t take a search engine to understand that unchecked corporate power shouldn’t eclipse consumer’s rights.”
The previous week, on Friday, James announced the launch of a similar investigation into Facebook, as major US tech players face increased scrutiny over the centralised power they hold over their markets. This is part of the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee’s plans for a ‘top-to-bottom’ antitrust investigation into the tech industry, including players like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple.
James added, “That is why New York has joined this bipartisan investigation of Google to determine whether the company has achieved or maintained its dominance through anticompetitive conduct. As with the Facebook investigation we are leading, we will use every investigative tool at our disposal in the Google investigation to ensure the truth is exposed.”
Only Alabama and California were missing from the list of states whose Attorneys General joined in the bipartisan investigation, which is led by Paxton. Google now faces four separate anti-trust investigations according to Forbes.
Under US law, antitrust or competition laws are used to prevent companies from developing a monopoly with the intent of preserving fair competition within the market. The penalty for monopolisation includes a large fine and the possibility of the company being broken up. Incidentally, breaking up Google is a campaign promise of Democratic presidential hopefuls Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
Google has yet to respond to the announcement of the investigation. When news of the plans for the same broke, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told CNN that was surprised by “the specific timing of it” but that “we have gone through similar situations in Europe and so it’s not a surprise to us.”
In March, Google was fined €1.49 billion by an EU anti-trust legislator for “illegal misuse of its dominant position in the market for the brokering of online search adverts.”
