Google parent company Alphabet on Monday asked a U.S. federal judge to dismiss an antitrust lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, which has failed to find evidence to support the lawsuit after more than three years of investigation.
In January, the U.S. Department of Justice joined eight states in filing an ad tech lawsuit against Google, accusing it of illegally abusing its dominant position in the online advertising market. The U.S. Department of Justice argued that Google should be forced to sell its ad management suite. Google, for its part, denied any wrongdoing.
“In more than three years of investigating Google’s ad tech business, the U.S. Department of Justice has received more than 2 million documents from Google and obtained more than 30 depositions from Google witnesses,” Alphabet said in a court filing late Monday, “yet the plaintiffs remain unable to find evidentiary support for their claims of antitrust harm.”
Google argued that the case should be dismissed because the government made mistakes in defining the online advertising market and improperly excluded powerful competitors such as Facebook. The company said the government estimated Google’s market share of advertising transactions at “more than 50 percent,” but not at the 70 percent needed for alleged market power. Google also said the government was wrong to assert that Google’s acquisitions of DoubleClick and AdMeld more than 10 years ago harmed competition. At the time, the U.S. antitrust enforcement agency approved both deals.
