United States of America: Ruled motion to dismiss antitrust lawsuit regarding competition in digital advertising market by Google

On 13 September 2022, the United States District Court Southern District of New York (court) ruled on the motion made by Google to dismiss the lawsuit regarding competition in the digital advertising market. Previously, the State of Texas, along with nine other US states (Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, South Dakota, North Dakota, Utah and Idaho), had filed a lawsuit against Google to the U.S. Eastern District Court of Texas for allegedly creating and maintaining a monopoly in the search advertising market. Google is accused of an array of exclusionary tactics, and the states ask for compensation that includes “structural relief”, usually meaning the divestiture of some of the company's assets. The court denied the motion, therefore the lawsuit will proceed. However, the courts dismissed the allegations against the "Open Bidding agreement" between Google and Meta (formerly Facebook), which allegedly gave Meta advantages in its trade of online ads, in exchange for abandoning technology that could have entered in competition with Google’s online advertising business.