According to CNET, Google filed a motion Friday to dismiss a multi-state antitrust lawsuit led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The company said the lawsuit accused Google of entering into illegal deals with online advertising rival Facebook, but failed to show that the search giant was "engaged in anti-competitive behavior."
Adam Cohen, Google's director of economic policy, said in a blog post Friday: "Attorney General Paxton's allegations are 'more heat than light' and we believe they do not meet legal criteria to bring this case to trial." The complaint misrepresented our business, products and motives, and we filed a motion to dismiss the complaint based on its failure to provide a reasonable antitrust claim. ”
An unedited version of the lawsuit, originally filed in 2020, said both Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg signed an illegal agreement that would supposedly give the social network an edge in the search giant's online ad auction. Facebook, which is now part of parent company Meta, is not a defendant in the case.
Cohen said Google's deal with Facebook is not anti-competitive, adding that the social network was one of several partners involved in its advertising bidding project announced back in 2018.
Paxton said Google's Friday motion calls for people to ignore "egregious" monopoly abuses. Paxton said in an emailed statement: "The company's motto used to be 'do no evil' and now asks the world to look at their egregious monopoly abuses, not to let people see evil deeds, hear evil deeds, and not discuss evil deeds." ”
![The Shunping County People's Procuratorate held an enlarged party group meeting to deeply study and implement the spirit of the national procurator general (expanded) meeting[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)