Nebraska, 30 Other States, File Antitrust Lawsuit Against Google

Dec. 17, 2020, 4:01 p.m. ·

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Nebraska and more than thirty other states and territories announced today they are suing Google over claims the tech-giant is using anti-competitive business practices to keep its search engine's place as one of the most profitable and accessible on the market.

Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson joined the Attorneys General from Iowa, Tennessee, and Colorado to explain the suit, which is separate from the one filed by the Department of Justice earlier in October.

The lawsuit alleges that Google has engaged in multiple anti-competitive business practices, including using their dominance in the search engine market to discriminate against specialized search engines like Yelp and TripAdvisor.

“Imagine a shelf at a store,” said Peterson. “Google controls that shelf and they control what companies who provide special search products can and cannot be a part of that display shelf... I would call it paranoid protectionism.”

Peterson hailed the lawsuit as a bipartisan agreement among states to recognize and be critical of the immense power companies like Google and Facebook have in the American economy and the practices they use to keep market share.

“We understand in this new economy this attention economy that data is critical. We understand in the concepts of artificial intelligence, machine learning, that those devices that technology is fed by data,” said Peterson. “Therefore, it's very important to understand in this market that control of data could create monopoly control.”