The US Justice Department sued Google on Tuesday for its dominance of the online advertising market, launching a fresh legal battle against the California-based tech giant.
The U.S govt alleges that Google's plan to assert dominance has been to “neutralise or eliminate” rivals through acquisitions and to force advertisers to use its products by making it difficult to use competitors' products
The case was the second federal lawsuit against Google over alleged antitrust violations and the first since US President Joe Biden took office two years ago.
The earlier case targeted Google's world-dominating search engine and is expected to go to trial later this year.
In this latest suit, prosecutors took aim at Google's extremely profitable advertising business, asking that it be broken up to level the playing field for other companies.
Google's ad dealings generated more than $200 billion in sales in 2021 and is parent company Alphabet's biggest moneymaker by a wide margin.