A bipartisan coalition of the top legal officers from 50 states and territories will investigate big tech behemoth Google’s alleged monopolistic practices, a dozen attorneys general announced Monday.
The group, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, and D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, a Democrat, made the announcement on the steps of the Supreme Court they would investigate Google’s online advertising practices, its data collection strategies, and whether it was taking illegal anticompetitive actions to stifle the free market online.
“This is not a lawsuit,” Paxton said. “This is an investigation to get the facts.”
Racine called it an “unusual situation” to see such broad-based bipartisan support among attorneys general typically at odds on various partisan issues.
“We are acting as one team to launch a fair investigation that will follow the facts,” Racine said.
Also in attendance were attorneys general from Alaska, South Dakota, Indiana, Arkansas, Utah, Florida, Missouri, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Nebraska. Though the nationwide coalition itself is broadly bipartisan, the vast majority of state attorneys general who appeared in D.C. on the warm September afternoon were Republicans.
Only California — where Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters are located — and Alabama did not join the nationwide investigation.
“Most Americans think it’s free to Google something, but it comes at a cost,” said Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, a Republican.
The bipartisan group was “standing together to protect the free market, to protect competition, and to protect the American consumer from this tech juggernaut,” she said.
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, another Republican, said Google’s dominance in the online advertising business “allows them to pick winners and losers” and said that inaction could mean the death of the dream of an open internet.
The investigation isn’t “anti-tech,” said Utah Attorney General Sam Reyes, also a Republican, but actually “for the benefit of the tech ecosystem.” The question, Reyes said, was “whether Google has strayed from its founding principles to do no evil.”
The Justice Department launched its own its own antitrust inquiry into Google in July to review “whether and how market-leading online platforms have achieved market power and are engaging in practices that have reduced competition, stifled innovation, or otherwise harmed consumers.”
And in 2018, the European Commission fined Google $5.1 billion for its anticompetitive practices.
On Friday, nine state attorneys general separately launched an antitrust investigation of social media giant Facebook too. The bipartisan effort announced Friday is led by Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“I am proud to be leading a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general in investigating whether Facebook has stifled competition and put users at risk,” James said in a news release. “We will use every investigative tool at our disposal to determine whether Facebook’s actions may have endangered consumer data, reduced the quality of consumers’ choices, or increased the price of advertising.”
Facebook paid a $5 billion penalty in a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission in July. The federal government is also looking into whether the social media giant’s acquisition of Instagram violated antitrust laws and continues to scrutinize Facebook’s privacy practices.
