Alphabet Inc’s Google Inc. ushered in a third antitrust lawsuit on Thursday, sued by a group of 38 U.S. state and district attorneys general, accusing the company of seeking to expand its search Monopoly to dominate the smart speaker, TV and car markets.
Colorado’s attorney general’s office said in a statement that the states requested that their lawsuit be joined with a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Justice Department in October.
The lawsuit focuses on Google’s search business and search advertising, and accuses Google of using exclusivity agreements to dominate new technologies, such as virtual assistant technology from rivals like Amazon’s Alexa. The allegation is based on concerns publicly expressed by smart speaker maker Sonos and a number of other companies that say Google has acted unfairly to increase its market power.
Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said: “Google is preventing competitors in the voice assistant market from reaching consumers through connected cars, which will be a part of internet access in the near future. important way.”
Google has not responded to a request for comment. Affected by the news, Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOGL) shares closed down nearly 1%.
The lawsuit comes after attorneys general in 11 states accused Google of engaging in illegal practices to maintain its position in Internet search and advertising. On Wednesday, the Republican state attorneys general led by Texas sued Google, focusing on the company’s dominance in digital advertising.
In addition to the two lawsuits filed against Facebook this month, the lawsuits against Google are expected to be the largest antitrust case in a generation, on a par with the lawsuit against Microsoft in 1998, when the antitrust case was considered to be the Internet’s largest antitrust case. Explosive growth clears the way.
In the lawsuits, Democrats and the Trump administration have reached a rare consensus, but the latter’s criticism has focused more on allegations that social media platforms silence conservative voices than antitrust concerns. Both moderate and progressive Democrats have applauded the lawsuit launched by the Trump administration.
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