Ask Court To Dismiss Texas Lawsuit, Google: Just Competitors Pretext To Barrier Progress

Google asks Texas court to reject antitrust lawsuit. (photo: doc. unsplash)

JAKARTA - Alphabet Inc's Google asked a federal judge on Friday, January 21 to dismiss most of the antitrust lawsuits filed by Texas and other states accusing the internet search giant of abusing its dominance in the online advertising market.

Google said in its court filing that states failed to demonstrate they were working illegally with Facebook, now Meta Inc, to counter "header bidding", a technology publishers are developing to make more money from ads placed on their websites. However, Facebook is not a defendant in the lawsuit.

The state also alleged that Google used at least three programs to manipulate ad auctions to force advertisers and publishers to use Google tools.

Google replied that the state had a "collection of complaints" but that there was no evidence of wrongdoing. On some of the allegations, Google argued the state waited too long to file its lawsuit.

"They criticized Google for not designing its products to better fit the needs of its competitors and for making improvements to products that left competitors too far behind. They saw a 'solution' to Google's success by holding back Google," the company said in its filing cited Reuters.

Google asked that four of the six charges be dropped with prejudice, meaning they cannot be brought back in the same court.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said they would continue the fight. "The company whose motto used to be 'Don't Be Evil' is now asking the world to examine the appalling monopoly violations and see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil," he said in a statement.

The Texas lawsuit has two other claims under state law and were made against Google that were detained last September. The internet search engine giant didn't ask for them to be laid off last Friday, but it may be in the future.

The lawsuit is part of a long list of federal and state antitrust investigations and litigation against the Big Tech platform. So far, they are considered to have too much monopoly in the internet business thanks to the technological advantages they have and continue to develop.