One month after a judge declared Google’s search engine an illegal monopoly, the tech giant faces another antitrust lawsuit that threatens to break up the company, this time over its advertising technology.

The Justice Department, joined by a coalition of states, and Google each made opening statements Monday to a federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, who will decide whether Google holds a monopoly over online advertising technology.

The regulators contend that Google built, acquired and maintains a monopoly over the technology that matches online publishers to advertisers. Dominance over the software on both the buy side and the sell side of the transaction enables Google to keep as much as 36 cents on the dollar when it brokers sales between publishers and advertisers, the government contends.

  • @TotalFat
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    -56 days ago

    The US gov’t does this to gain leverage over these companies – not to help Americans. They can then use them to conduct surveillance on us.

    • @[email protected]
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      fedilink
      36 days ago

      I think you’re mixing up conspiracy theories. Please try again, and keep your facts straight. The NSA is going to be getting data from Google no matter what happens. They don’t need another government organization to make Google spend millions of dollars on lawyers for that to continue.