Justice Department Hits Google With Biggest Antitrust Lawsuit in Two Decades

The U.S. Justice Department and 11 states filed an antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet Inc.’s Google on Tuesday for allegedly breaking the law in using its market power to fend off rivals.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Google, whose search engine is so ubiquitous that its name has become a verb, had revenue of $162 billion in 2019, more than the nation of Hungary.

Coming just days before the U.S. presidential election, the filing’s timing could be seen as a political gesture since it fulfills a promise made by President Donald Trump to his supporters to hold certain companies to account for allegedly stifling conservative voices.

Republican Senator Josh Hawley, a vociferous Google critic, accused the company of keeping power through “illegal means” and called the lawsuit “the most important antitrust case in a generation.”

The federal lawsuit marks a rare moment of agreement between the Trump administration and progressive Democrats.

The 11 states that joined the lawsuit all have Republican attorneys general.

The lawsuit comes more than a year after the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission began antitrust investigations into four big tech companies: Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Google.

Seven years ago, the FTC settled an antitrust probe into Google over alleged bias in its search function to favor its products, among other issues. The settlement came over the objections of some FTC staff attorneys.

Google has faced similar legal challenges overseas.

The European Union fined Google $1.7 billion in 2019 for stopping websites from using Google’s rivals to find advertisers, $2.6 billion in 2017 for favoring its own shopping business in search, and $4.9 billion in 2018 for blocking rivals on its wireless Android operating system.