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Investing.com — The U.S. Justice Department is poised to sue Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google as soon as today over antitrust concerns surrounding the tech giant’s dominance of the online advertising market, according to a Bloomberg News report on Monday citing sources familiar with the matter.
The people, who the Bloomberg report did not identify, added that the case is expected to be filed before the end of the week.
Neither the Justice Department nor Google provided a comment to Bloomberg.
California-based Google sits atop the nearly $278.6 billion U.S. online ad market. The advertising business, itself responsible for about four-fifths of Google’s total revenue, generates money by bringing advertisers together with websites, newspapers, and other firms.
However, advertisers and online publishers have said Google has not clearly outlined how these ad revenues are distributed.
Google faces a separate lawsuit from the Justice Department that alleges that the company’s search business effectively elbows out competition through exclusive distribution deals with wireless carriers and mobile device makers. The case is scheduled to go to trial in September.
In addition, state attorneys general around the U.S. have also brought three other lawsuits against Google, alleging that it dominates the markets for online advertising, search technology, and apps through its Android mobile platform.
Google has argued that it faces increasing competition in online advertising, pointing in court filings to tech rivals like Facebook-owner Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN).
Although Google is still the biggest player in the online ad market, research from Insider Intelligence suggests that the company’s dominance is starting to wane, with its share of digital ad revenues seen dipping last year to 28.8% from 36.7% in 2016.
