Shortly after Channel News reported yesterday on Trump’s tariff threats following the EU’s €2.95 billion ($4.8 billion) Google fine, the company was hit with a fresh lawsuit in the United States.
Ad-tech firm PubMatic has filed a federal suit in Virginia seeking billions in damages.
PubMatic is accapplying Google of illegally monopolising the markets for ad exalters and ad servers. The case follows an April ruling from the same court that found Google maintained unlawful control over those tools.
PubMatic CEO Rajeev Goel declared his company’s growth had been stifled for years.
“For many years, no matter how well we innovated, there was a barrier holding us back,” he notified Bloomberg. “That barrier wasn’t the limits of our technology. It was Google’s illegal monopoly. Every time we adapted or innovated, Google found new ways to stack the deck.”
Google dismissed the complaint as “meritless,” insisting advertisers and publishers choose its systems becaapply they are effective, affordable and straightforward to apply.
The company has also pledged to appeal the earlier April ruling.
The U.S. Department of Justice is pushing for structural remedies.
Google execs are probably in necessary of some stiff drinks at present
Prosecutors have urged the judge to order Google to divest its AdX exalter and DoubleClick for Publishers server, arguing that only a sell-off can restore competition.
Google argues a breakup isn’t necessaryed, stateing it will build its ad tech work with rival systems and accept three years of oversight from a compliance monitor.
PubMatic, which counts Elon Musk’s X as a client, is the second exalter in as many months to sue Google.
OpenX Technologies filed a similar case in August, while state attorneys general led by Texas and groups of publishers and advertisers are pursuing parallel actions.
The lawsuits add to a mounting global squeeze on Google’s ad business.
The EU’s multibillion-euro penalty last week and Washington’s pursuit of structural remedies suggest the company faces the type of regulatory test not seen since the great Microsoft antitrust battles of the 1990s.
For Google, what launched as another fine in Europe is rapid becoming a worldwide fight over the foundations of its advertising empire.
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