On November 28th local time, the Canadian Competition Agency issued a statement stating that it is taking legal action against Google for its anti competitive practices in online advertising technology services in Canada. On that day, due to the impact of the US Thanksgiving holiday, the US stock market was closed for one day, and Google A closed slightly higher before the market closed.
The statement stated that the investigation found that as Canada's largest online advertising technology provider, Google abused its market dominance by implementing anti competitive behavior, preventing competition from rivals, suppressing innovation, raising advertising costs, and reducing revenue for distribution agencies.
The Canadian Competition Authority stated that they have filed an application with the competition court, requesting Google to sell two advertising technology tools, pay fines, and prohibit Google from continuing to engage in anti competitive behavior.
The statement states that the final decision on the event lies with the competition court.
This is not the first time Google has been sued for monopoly or unfair competition. In September of this year, the European Court of Justice announced that it upheld the lower court's ruling and fined Google 2.4 billion euros to punish its abuse of monopoly power against competitors. The final ruling means that Google cannot appeal any further. This case began in 2017 when the European Commission made a ruling that Google violated EU antitrust laws by displaying its own shopping service with high rankings on search engines while lowering the rankings of competitors.
In 2020, the US Department of Justice, together with prosecutors from 52 states and jurisdictions, filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing it of paying billions of dollars to smartphone manufacturers such as Apple and Samsung, as well as wireless service providers, to sign exclusive agreements in exchange for Google Search being set as the default search engine for smartphones and web browsers. If these collaborators choose to receive a share from Google search revenue, they cannot pre install and promote competitors.
Source: CCTV News, Public Information, and Market Data