Texas, together with other U.S. states, filed an amended complaint against Google, accusing the tech giant of using coercive tactics and violating antitrust laws to boost its dominant advertising business.
The new allegations are the latest in a flurry of regulatory reviews against Google over its alleged unfair practices, with the tech giant facing a number of lawsuits, including one over monopolistic practices by the Justice Department.
Google lost an appeal against a $2.8 billion antitrust ruling by the European Union last week.
The amended U.S. lawsuit, filed last week in a federal court in New York, accuses Google of monopolistic and coercive tactics in its efforts to dominate and eliminate competition in the online advertising business.
The updated lawsuit also mentions Google’s use of a secret program called “Project Bernanke” in 2013 that allegedly manipulated bidding data to gain an advantage over its own advertising sales. It mentions a 2015 program in which Google allegedly eliminated the second-highest bids from auctions, pooled money, and used it to manipulate bids only from advertisers who used the tech giant’s Google ads.
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