In recent years, governments have gotten increasingly worried about Big Tech's dealings, with tons of anti-trust probes popping up all over the world. An ongoing multistate suit in the US led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has just unveiled some juicy details about dealings between Google and Facebook.
Allegedly, the search giant and the social media company (now known as Meta), had a behind-the-curtains agreement,
which would give Facebook an unfair advantage when using Google's
advertising exchange. Thus, making it easier for Facebook results to pop
up on ad spaces.
Where the case gets spicy is
recently unredacted information, which claims that Meta (Facebook) CEO
Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet (Google) CEO Sundar Pichai were both very
well acquainted with what the deal is supposed to achieve. Furthermore,
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has been quoted as saying that "This is a
big deal strategically" in a string of 2018 emails that have been
uncovered during the suit.
Another email sets
up a meeting between Sandberg and Zuckerberg and explicitly states that
the deal will be signed only with the latter's approval. The lawsuit
also alleges that Sundar Pichai was also personally acquainted with the
terms of the arrangement.
Google, being the fan
of quirky code names that it is, even had an internal "secret" name for
the deal — it was named Jedi Blue, as per the case documents.
Both companies deny that their arrangement was illegal. Google
spokesperson Peter Schottenfels calls the whole lawsuit "full of
inaccuracies" and lacking legal merit. He further added "We sign
hundreds of agreements every year that don’t require CEO approval, and
this was no different", insisting that Sundar Pichai may not have known
all the details about the deal.
Meta
spokesperson Chris Sgro insisted that Facebook has similar ad bidding
agreements with many other bidding platforms and they have helped
increase the competition for ad placements, while still compensating
publishers fairly and bringing a good amount of value to advertisers.
It's worth noting, Meta is not a defendant in this lawsuit — it's strictly against Google
What's the multistate suit against Google about?
Back in December of 2020, ten states (Texas, Arkansas, Idaho,
Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota,
and Utah) filed an anti-competitive conduct lawsuit against Google in a federal court in Texas. The suit was announced and is being led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The
Google and Facebook arrangement is at the core of the lawsuit, but it
also points out the fact that Google controls the Ad Tech marketplace,
which is supposed to bring advertisers and content creators together in
an unbiased manner.
Google absolutely denies to
be abusing its power and states that it readily shares the majority of
its Ad Tech revenue with 3rd party publishers.
And this whole ordeal is an entirely separate case to the Justice Department suing Google
over abuse of its online search and advertising dominance. In this
filing from October 2020, it's alleged that Google uses the millions of
dollars its search and ad businesses generate to pay its Android phone
manufacturing partners to keep Google services as default on their
smartphones. Thus, creating a closed off loop, which doesn't let
outsiders in easily.
On this one, Google
claimed that the accusation is deeply flawed and pointed out that there
are plenty of alternatives — people just choose to use Google.
The
anti-trust probes just keep piling on and Google isn't the only one in
the scopes — the Justice Dept. and FTC are also actively investigating
Apple, Amazon, and Facebook, among other tech companies.
Source: phonearena.com
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