Thirty-five U.S states plus Puerto Rico, Guam and Washington, D.C., on Thursday filed a lawsuit in opposition to Google, demanding their breakup as they accuse the tech giant of abusing its market energy to attempt to make its search engine as dominant inside vehicles, TVs and audio system as it’s in telephones.
The lawsuit is separate from the one filed by Texas and nine other states on Wednesday. It can be separate from the case in opposition to Google in October by the U.S Justice Department.
The lawsuits in opposition to the $1 trillion firm follows a few years of accusations that Google and different tech giants together with Facebook and Amazon use their huge market energy to stifle competitors and hurt shoppers.
The 38 U.S States ganged up in opposition to Google with one request to the court docket – discover Google responsible of breaking antitrust legislation and order an finish to any agreements or different conduct that it finds to be exclusionary.
Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson, mentioned the states will not be searching for any financial compensation.
“Fines are like kicking gorillas in the shin. We fortunately have remedies that are much broader in scope,” he mentioned.
“It’s not people use Google. It’s Google that uses people,” mentioned Peterson. “Google chooses to extract volumes of personal data in the search market.”
Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who was one the a number of state attorneys normal that sued Microsoft Corp in 1998, mentioned;
“Google is preventing competitors in the voice assistant market from reaching consumers through connected cars, which stand to be a significant way the internet is accessed in the near future.”
In response to the lawsuit, Google’s spokesperson Adam (*38*), mentioned in a blog post;
“We look forward to making that case in court.”
“Google Search is designed to provide you with the most relevant results. We know that if you don’t like the results we’re giving you, you have numerous alternatives—including Amazon, Expedia, Tripadvisor and many others just a click away”, (*38*) added.