Texas and nine other states sued Google on Wednesday, accusing it of illegally working with Facebook to boost its already-dominant online advertising business.
The nine states that joined Texas are Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, South Dakota, North Dakota, Utah, and Idaho.
The antitrust lawsuit was filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who said in a Facebook video that Google “eliminated its competition and crowned itself the king of online advertising.”
“This goliath of a company is using its power to manipulate the market,” said Paxton.
“Google repeatedly used its monopolistic power to control pricing, engage in market collusions to rig auctions in a tremendous violation of justice,” said Paxton.
Google called the Texas lawsuit “meritless” and said: “We will strongly defend ourselves from his baseless claims in court.”
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Texas lawsuit is the second major complaint from regulators against Google and the fourth in a series of federal and state lawsuits aimed at reining in alleged bad behavior by Big Tech platforms.
The states asked Google, which is owned by Alphabet and controls a third of the global online advertising industry, to compensate them for damages and is seeking “structural relief,” which is usually interpreted as forcing a company to divest some of its assets.
Wednesday’s action also raises the legal stakes for Google, which is now expected to face a third antitrust lawsuit from another group of attorneys general on Thursday over anti-competitive behavior, according to a source familiar with the matter.
