DoubleClick Deal Started ‘Google’s March to Monopoly,’ US Says
A new lawsuit aims to force the internet giant to break off parts of its ad-tech business.
Legal pressure has been mounting on Alphabet Inc.’s Google for years, making a large showdown over the company’s market power seem increasingly unavoidable. A new lawsuit in which the government claims that company is illegally monopolizing the advertising-technology business and needs to be broken up has the potential to be the main event.
A good way to think about the case, according to the prosecutors who filed it, is to see it as an effort to reverse a process kicked off with Google’s 2007 announcement that it was spending $3.1 billion to buy an ad-tech startup named DoubleClick. That deal, the US Department of Justice and eight states argue in the complaint they filed on Jan. 24, “was a first step in Google’s march to monopoly.”