The US’ Justice Department could sue Google as early as next week over its dominance in online search and advertising, Reuters reported. In particular, the company could potentially be sued for looking to disadvantage rivals such as Microsoft’s Bing by not sharing data on user preferences with them to hurt their ad business. The department is also reportedly looking at investigating “search advertising”, which are basically advertisements related to a user’s particular search query. Google controls whose ads are visible in such searches, and also the tools required to make those ads. The Justice Department is currently asking state attorneys general to sign onto the lawsuit, the report continued, and added that Google, on its part has denied any wrongdoing. It was also reported that US Attorney General William Barr has been personally for an early antitrust complaint against Google, and the department is under pressure to present a complaint against Google in the run up to the US Presidential election in November. The lawsuit will be a culmination of a year long investigation The Justice Department, in July last year, had opened a broad investigation of “market-leading” online platforms to review if they engage in practices that reduce competition, stifle innovation or harm consumers. Without specifying the companies that would be probed, it had said that “search, social media, and some retail services online” companies would be reviewed. This could be a reference to Google, Facebook and Amazon. According to a regulatory filing by Google’s parent Alphabet in August 2019,…
