Google gets sued yet again for another round of antitrust allegations. This time, the case comes from a joint effort of 38 US states. The allegations state that Google abuses its market power in order to rearrange the search results for it to be able to squeeze out its competition.
Google gets 3rd lawsuit
According to the official legal complaint, Google had methodologically buried other competitor sites and services within its own search results. This was despite the competitors having to pay Google for advertising their services. At the same time, it was said that it pushes to display its very own competing reviews or even its services. This reportedly prevents companies from being able to create specialized services that could potentially challenge Google's very own prized search engine, according to a complaint noted in the story by ZDNet.
The complaint stated that in that way, Google actually bars its own advertising customers from being able to make their own value known to other consumers as a certain manner that would benefit consumers, competition, and even advertisers. In doing this, Google then degrades the access provider to certain specialized services in comparison to the other services that don't pose any competitive threat.
39 attorney-generals team up
This particular abuse of power has given Google awhopping 90% of the whole internet search market. This was according to the group of 38 attorney-generals in their lawsuit statement. By comparison, the known bipartisan group stated that no competing search engine is able to get over 7% of the entire market over the course of the past decade. It was also stated that no new entrant in the whole general search market of the United States has been able to account for over 1% of the internet searches in a full year.
According to Colorado Attorney-General known as Phil Weiser, the economy is now more concentrated than ever. He stated that consumers are all squeezed when they are being deprived of choices in certain valued products and services. Google's very own anti-competitive actions have been able to protect its own general search monopolies as well as its excluded rivals.
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Google's antitrust lawsuit
The consumers are then notably deprived of the benefits coming from competitive choices, the forestalling innovation, and also the undermining of new entry or even expansion. In response towards this lawsuit, Google's very own director of economic policy known as Adam Cohen stated in an official blog post that the company is prepared to answer any questions but would fight against these allegations.
Cohen clarified that the lawsuit seeks to be able to redesign Search in different ways that would deprive Americans of certain helpful information and also hurt businesses' ability to be able to connect directly with their customers. Cohen stated that he is looking forward to make this case in court while still remaining focused on being able to deliver certain high-quality search experience for its users.
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Written by Urian Buenconsejo
