Courts/ Economy

Maura Healey signs onto lawsuit against Google  

Multi-state suit says tech giant violated anti-monopoly laws 

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A WEEK AFTER she signed onto a multi-state lawsuit against Facebook, Attorney General Maura Healey now has Google in her sights.  

On Thursday, Healey announced that she had signed on to a lawsuit filed by a bipartisan group of 38 attorneys general against the country’s dominant search engine.  

The lawsuit was led by attorneys general in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah and filed in US District Court in Washington, DC. The suit alleges that Google violated federal anti-monopoly laws by using a variety of tactics to limit competition in search engines and the related advertising market. Currently, 90 percent of internet searches in the US use Google. 

The suit alleges that Google “has systematically degraded the ability of other companies to access consumers.” Google gains massive amounts of information from people’s internet searches, which then creates a lucrative market for search-based advertising. 

The suit alleges that Google maintains its dominance by stopping competition. “Instead of simply producing a better service that keeps consumers and advertisers loyal, Google focuses on building an impenetrable moat to protect its kingdom,” the lawsuit charges.   

For example, the suit says, Google uses exclusionary agreements to limit the ability of other search engines to reach consumers. It pays Apple around $10 billion a year to put Google as the default search engine on Apple devices. The suit says the company also uses restrictive contracts to limit search competition on Android devices. 

Google also created a platform used by advertisers to help them manage the ads that show up on searches. Google markets it as a “neutral” tool to compare the performance of search ads on Google and other search engines – but in reality, it favors advertising that appears on Google, according to the filing. 

The suit says Google also makes it difficult for customers to bypass Google’s search engine and go directly to their destination. It deprives certain sites that might compete with Google of prime screen placement – for example, sites that provide travel or entertainment services. 

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Shira Schoenberg

Reporter, CommonWealth
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About Shira Schoenberg

Shira Schoenberg is a reporter at CommonWealth magazine. Shira previously worked for more than seven years at the Springfield Republican/MassLive.com where she covered state politics and elections, covering topics as diverse as the launch of the legal marijuana industry, problems with the state's foster care system and the elections of U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Gov. Charlie Baker. Shira won the Massachusetts Bar Association's 2018 award for Excellence in Legal Journalism and has had several stories win awards from the New England Newspaper and Press Association. Shira covered the 2012 New Hampshire presidential primary for the Boston Globe. Before that, she worked for the Concord (N.H.) Monitor, where she wrote about state government, City Hall and Barack Obama's 2008 New Hampshire primary campaign. Shira holds a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

About Shira Schoenberg

Shira Schoenberg is a reporter at CommonWealth magazine. Shira previously worked for more than seven years at the Springfield Republican/MassLive.com where she covered state politics and elections, covering topics as diverse as the launch of the legal marijuana industry, problems with the state's foster care system and the elections of U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Gov. Charlie Baker. Shira won the Massachusetts Bar Association's 2018 award for Excellence in Legal Journalism and has had several stories win awards from the New England Newspaper and Press Association. Shira covered the 2012 New Hampshire presidential primary for the Boston Globe. Before that, she worked for the Concord (N.H.) Monitor, where she wrote about state government, City Hall and Barack Obama's 2008 New Hampshire primary campaign. Shira holds a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

“In this fashion, Google undermines competitive threats, limiting the ability of consumers and advertisers to obtain information and make their own choices,” the lawsuit says. 

CNN reports that this is third anti-trust lawsuit that Google is facing. A separate suit filed by the US Department of Justice is pending, as is one filed by Texas and nine other states. 

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