The top executives at Google and Facebook are accused of conspiring to approve a secret deal that gave Facebook an advantage in online advertising auctions.
The lawsuit alleges that Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, negotiated the deal with Google chief executive Sundar Pichai with the approval of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Sandberg referred to the agreement as a big deal. The halcyon days of Google's youth are a distant memory. Two college students founded a company that changed the way that people search the internet, according to the lawsuit. Since then, Google has expanded its business far beyond search and dropped its famous don't be evil motto. Google sought to kill competition through a series of exclusion tactics, including an unlawful agreement with Facebook, its largest potential competitive threat, to manipulate advertising auctions, according to internal Google documents. Antitrust evils are a type of antitrust evil, according to the Supreme Court. This litigation will show that Google is guilty of antitrust evils and it wants to make sure that Google won't be evil anymore. The suit alleges that Google misled publishers and advertisers about the way it prices and carries out ads and created secret algorithms to hike prices for some buyers while deflating revenue from certain advertisers.
In a statement to Fox News, Google said that the lawsuit was full of inaccuracies and lacks legal merit. The company rejected the accusation that Pinchar was involved in a secret agreement and said We sign hundreds of agreements every year that don't require CEO approval, and this was no different. Adsense technology helps websites and apps fund their content, and enable small businesses to reach customers around the world, Google said. There is a lot of competition in online advertising, which has reduced ads tech fees and expanded options for publishers and advertisers. We will continue to fight this meritless lawsuit in court. Facebook, now known as Meta, does not appear to be a defendant in the lawsuit, but in a statement to Fox News said that its agreement with Google is similar to agreements with other bidding platforms.
Meta's non-exclusive bidding agreement with Google and the similar agreements we have with other bidding platforms have helped to increase competition for ads placements, the statement said. These business relationships enable Meta to deliver more value to advertisers while compensating publishers, resulting in better outcomes for all.