On Thursday, a group of 38 US states filed a lawsuit against the search giant Google. The case claimed that google has an illegal monopoly over the online search market that hurts consumers and advertisers. The cause is led by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and was filed in federal court in Washington, DC by states represented by bipartisan attorneys general.
The lawsuit was joined by the attorneys general of dozens of states, including Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wyoming, the District of Columbia, and the territories of Guam and Puerto Rico.
The one leading the lawsuit against Google, Attorney General Weiser, said that “consumers are denied the benefits of competition, including the possibility of higher quality services and better privacy protections. Advertisers are harmed through lower quality and higher prices that are, in turn, passed along to consumers.”
But I mean, it’s Google, you know, it isn’t going to take everything by just lying down. As it so happens, Google said that it would challenge the lawsuit because the case stands to cause harm the internet users. The current lawsuit against Google seems to be a follow-up for the European Unions’ years of struggle against google into bringing the company under their order. But to their dismay, the only thing they could get out from the company over five years was simply a fine of nearly $9 billion, which Google can easily afford. Trust me; it can.
But the current Attorney Generals who have filed the case seem to think that they have a better plan to crack down google. “Fines are just like kicking the gorilla in the shins. We, fortunately, have remedies that are much broader in scope than what some of the foreign competition authorities have,” said Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson.
In response, Google stated that the lawsuit is simply a ploy to force its search engine redesign. And the move will only benefit the web “aggregators” at the expense of retailers, airlines, hotels, and local businesses.
“This lawsuit demands changes to the design of Google Search, requiring us to prominently feature online middlemen in place of direct connections to businesses. If successful, the lawsuit today would roll back nearly two decades of search innovation, leaving consumers worse off.”
