Google Violates Antitrust Law... Or Does It?
It has been stated that 48 states have accused Google of violating the antitrust law. Attorney's in these 48 states are all leading separate investigations on what is happening with Google. The only two states that are not involved in the investigation are California and Alabama.
The overall point of the probing is for the states to try to prove if Google broke the law in reaching dominance in the industry and trying to squash its rivals. It is stated that advertising dominance started in Google's 2007 purchase of online advertising company DoubleClick. This is when Google was fined for "unfairly inserted exclusivity clauses into contracts with advertisers." This was the start of the unfairness that rivals have to face in the online advertising business.
There is an argument that when asking Google about, for example, the best hair products to use for damaged hair. Instead of receiving the best results I would receive products that have paid Google to appear higher on the search page. As a result of this, I would get a product that was not as good because Google prioritized subsidiaries instead of what their users really need. This is just one clear example of Google controlling what internet users are seeing.
In concerns of Google squishing its rivals in this article, it states how Google this year will "control 31% of global digital ad dollars." This is worrisome for Google's smaller competitors because this raises the concern of how much power Google has in setting rates and favoriting and referring their own services. Since Google will be referring their own services it makes it hard for smaller competitors to even been seen.
Overall though even though this is an ongoing investigation there is no clear action of what will be made of these accusations. This ends with Google executive Walker speaking about how Google doesn't hurt but assists. Emphasizing that the company's products help people every day.
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