It is the most important legal action in more than twenty years carried out by the federal government of the United States against one of the giants of the American “Big Tech” (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple). The US Department of Justice will initiate proceedings against Google for infringement of competition law in order to preserve its monopoly in the field of search and online advertising, announced Tuesday, October 20 to Agence France- Press a judicial source close to the case.
Information also communicated by Reuters and the Associated Press agency, after revelations from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. The lawsuit is expected to be filed in federal court in the US capital Washington, DC.
Here we go: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA et al v. GOOGLE LLC https://t.co/cv3WHKwv3t
Contacted by AFP, the Ministry of Justice has, for the time being, declined to comment, even if it organized a virtual briefing with journalists in the afternoon on an antitrust action. Google did not respond immediately.
The government’s recommendations were not yet known, but they could include recommendations aimed at dismantling parts of the search engine giant.
The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the main federal competition authority, opened investigations last year targeting Google, but also Amazon, Apple and Facebook, suspected of anti-competitive practices to strengthen their position on their respective markets.
Monopolies worthy of the era of the oil barons
On October 6, in a long-awaited 449-page report, the US parliamentarians of the House of Representatives antitrust subcommittee made a clear statement: “These giants that were once small start-ups, challenging the status quo, have become the kind of monopolies we haven’t seen since the days of oil barons and railroad tycoons. “
Google was fined 4.3 billion euros in 2018 from the European competition authorities for unfair practices in the Android ecosystem, in order to strengthen its dominant position, particularly in the area of search on Internet.
Like its competitors Amazon, Facebook and Apple, Google has been in the crosshairs of the American authorities for several years. Various investigations have been launched against the GAFA by federal agencies, parliamentary committees as well as prosecutors in almost all American states.
At the political level, these groups attract the wrath of both conservative elected officials, who accuse them of partiality, as well as progressive elected representatives, who are concerned about infringements of competition law and the strengthening of inequalities caused by “Big Tech”. “.
Republican Senator from Missouri Josh Hawley, very critical of the GAFA, welcomed the pending lawsuits from the US government, saying it would be the “Largest abuse of dominance lawsuit in a generation. “
