The Texas attorney general reported on Tuesday that four more states have entered a lawsuit brought by Texas and others against Alphabet’s Google, accusing it of violating antitrust laws to improve its already-dominant advertisement sector.
Alaska, Florida, Montana, Nevada, and Puerto Rico also joined the complaint filed in December, according to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The case now has 15 claimants from 15 different states and territories.
The suit was one of three brought against Google by the federal government or states last year.
Paxton and the other attorney generals revealed information about Google’s partnership with Facebook in announcing Tuesday’s amended lawsuit.
“Our coalition looks forward to holding Google accountable for its illegal conduct and reforming Google’s practices in the future,” Paxton said in a statement. “We are confident the company will be forced to pay for its misconduct through significant financial penalties.”
The charges are being fought by Google, and a hearing scheduled for Thursday is expected to include a review of the company’s motion to get the case moved from Texas to California.
More About Allegations On Google:
Google is accused of breaking the law by dominating the measures in the process of putting advertisements online, according to the complaint. It claims that the company secretly collaborates with Facebook, its closest online advertisement rival and that it acts unfairly under the guise of protecting users’ privacy. One of the consequences, according to publishers, has been lower sales.
Without going into detail, the amended lawsuit claims that Facebook and Google “work together to recognize consumers using Apple products.” In recent years, Apple Inc. has improved the forms in which its Safari browser and iPhone models block what it considers to be privacy-invading consumer monitoring by ad tech firms, some of which have attempted to formulate circumvention steps.
Requests for comment from Facebook, Google, and Apple were not immediately returned.
Beginning in 2015, Google was able to access messages from Facebook’s WhatsApp service that users had backed up to Google’s Drive cloud storage system, according to the updated complaint.
The complaint claims that the company was aware that users were unaware of its access but “did little to remedy this confusion.”
As per the complaint, Google Drive acquired nearly 250 million new users as a result of the WhatsApp collaboration by June 2016.
