A Texas-led group of US states has filed an amended lawsuit against Google, owned by Alphabet Inc., accusing the tech giant of using coercive tactics and violating antitrust laws in an effort to boost its already dominant advertising business.
The updated allegations are the latest in an onslaught of government scrutiny from Google over its practices. The tech company faces multiple lawsuits, including one from the Justice Department over monopoly practices.
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Earlier this week, Google lost an appeal against a $ 2.8 billion cartel decision by the European Union.
The amended U.S. lawsuit, filed late Friday in federal court in New York, accuses Google of using monopoly and coercive tactics against advertisers to dominate and drive competition in online advertising.
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The lawsuit also highlights that in 2013 Google used a secret program called Project Bernanke, which uses bid data to give its own ad purchase an advantage. For example, in a 2015 version of the program, Google allegedly dropped the second highest bids from publisher auctions, pooled money, and then spent that money just to increase bids from advertisers who used the company’s Google Ads. Otherwise they would have likely lost the auctions, the states claimed.
Neither Alphabet nor the Texas Attorney General immediately responded to requests for comment on the lawsuit.
