On October 20, 2020, the Department of Justice, abetted by eleven states’ attorneys general, filed suit against Google for violating section 2 of the Sherman Act and operating a monopoly. The result is probably the DOJ’s biggest antitrust case since it took on Microsoft in 1998.

Nearly two months later, on December 11, the State of California filed for permission to join the DOJ’s suit. On December 16, Texas and nine other states brought a separate antitrust action in the U.S. District Court for East Texas against Google. The following day, the States of Michigan and Wisconsin filed requests for joinder to the DOJ suit.

Also on December 17, a coalition of 35 states, plus Puerto Rico, Guam and the District of Columbia filed their own antitrust suit against Google in the District of Columbia. In the words of Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen, “the separate complaint filed today by a coalition of state Attorneys General, underscores the broad and bipartisan consensus that Google’s practices in search and search advertising need antitrust redress.”

The suit seeks to “restrain Google from unlawfully restraining trade and maintaining monopolies in markets that include general search services, general search text advertising, and general search advertising in the United States.” As the court filing states:

Google, one of the largest companies in the world, has methodically undertaken actions to entrench and reinforce its general search services and search-related advertising monopolies by stifling competition. As the gateway to the internet, Google has systematically degraded the ability of other companies to access consumers.

This is not the first time that the internet has given birth to a monopoly. The complaint alleges:

just as Microsoft improperly maintained its monopoly through conduct directed at Netscape, Google has improperly maintained and extended its search-related monopolies through exclusionary conduct that has harmed consumers, advertisers, and the competitive process itself.

As anyone who owns a computer or mobile device knows, the complaint alleges that “Google’s monopoly position derives principally from its overwhelming and durable monopoly in general internet searches.” A whopping 90 percent of all United States internet searches employ Google. Small wonder that no other company has been able to break into the search engine field and that “google” has become a verb synonymous with searching the internet.

How has Google managed to do this? The allegations in the suit are disturbing:

A central foundation of Google’s business and its resulting monopolies is its collection of vast amounts of data about the people who use Google’s search engine. General search results are not paid for with cash, but in exchange for users’ attention and extremely valuable data. Google closely tracks and analyzes virtually every internet search and click performed by users. In 2010, Google’s then-CEO Eric Schmidt boasted: ‘We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you have been thinking about.’

Or, “[p]ut simply, Google may have more data about more people than any other entity in the history of the world.”

Santa Claus knows whether you’ve been bad or good. Google knows when and how.

The suit alleges that, not only has Google overwhelmingly dominated the search market but that it has done so intentionally: “Instead of simply producing a better service that keeps consumers and advertisers loyal, Google focuses on building an impenetrable moat to protect its kingdom.”

This third lawsuit suit, like the DOJ suit brought in October (but unlike the Texas suit that focuses exclusively on online display advertising markets), concentrates on three areas in which Google squelches competition. The filing lays them out as follows:

(1) Google uses its massive financial resources to limit the number of consumers who use a Google competitor. For example, according to public estimates Google pays Apple between $8 and $12 billion per year to ensure that Google is enthroned as the default search engine on Apple devices, and it limits general search competition on Android devices with a web of restrictive contracts. Google pursues similar strategies with other devices, such as voice assistants and internet-connected cars.

(2) Google’s Search Ads 360 (SA360) service, a search advertising marketing tool used by many of the world’s most sophisticated advertisers, has long pledged to offer advertisers a “neutral” means for purchasing and comparing the performance of not only Google’s search advertising, but also that of its closest competitors. But, in reality, Google operates SA360 to severely limit the tool's interoperability with a competitor, thereby disadvantaging SA360 advertisers.

and

(3) Google throttles consumers from bypassing its general search engine and going directly to their chosen destination, especially when those destinations threaten Google’s monopoly power.

The differences between the DOJ suit and the present one lie very much in the details. The plaintiffs in this action have, in fact, asked to consolidate their proceedings with those of the DOJ’s suit. To explain the need for itself, the present suit states: “this Complaint alleges additional facts demonstrating a broader pattern of Google’s anticompetitive conduct, harming consumers, advertisers, and the competitive process.”

Both suits agree that “it is now time to put a stop to those anticompetitive actions and to remedy past competitive harms, not simply by ceasing the wrongful conduct, but also by reversing the adverse impacts and restoring competition.”

Whence the three claims for relief for violations of Section 2 of the Sherman Act: maintaining a monopoly of general search services, maintaining a monopoly of general search advertising, and maintaining a monopoly of general search text advertising.

“We look forward to litigating alongside our state partners for the benefit of American consumers,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Alexander Okuliar of the Antitrust Division. The existence of the three suits shows just how pressing the matter is. If there is one question to be asked about the case, it would be this: what took them so long?