Google’s Ad Practices Draw Bipartisan Antitrust Probe

this week it's Google. Attorneys general from forty eight states announced on the steps of the Supreme Court that they've opened an investigation into weather Google's advertising practices violate antitrust laws. Joining me a Spencer Waller, professor at Loyola University School of Law. Spencer, do we know what aspects of Google's business the state A G s are looking into? Well, it's a little bit hard to day. I was watching the press conference earlier this morning, the one from yesterday

and twelve fifteen Attorney generals spoke about different things. They spoke about Google's dominance in search, they talked about Google's dominance in advertising. Different comments mentioned things about mobile video, their ownership of YouTube, their use of data. I think all these are on the table for the coalition of states. Last week, a coalition of eight states announced it was investigating Facebook. This group includes every state except California and Alabama,

so much more of a coalition. How does the sheer size affect the investigation and the ability of the investigators. Well, it's the largest coalition of state attorneys general in the nitrust area that I've ever heard of. In the Microsoft case twenty years ago, there are approximately twenty states, including the District of Columbia, UM who were part of this, and the is virtually everybody except the two states you mentioned. So some of the states have twenty thirty lawyers and

PhD economists on their staff who do anti trust. Some have one person or one person who does this and perhaps other things like consumer protection. But when you put them together, you have a coalition of people. States are used to cooperating on antitrust. They can put together a team of lead lead states and then supporting states that will rival the amount of people that a private law

firm would have on a matter of this size. When you compare, we know the Justice Department is investigating Google as well, and how subcommittee investigating Google. When you compare the state's investigation with the federal investigation, who has an advantage in terms of the laws they're operating under? The resources the remedies give us a general idea. Well, Um, the laws are about the same that the states will be proceeding under federal antitrust law, plus some aspects of

their local state UH laws on the same subject. So the baseline is whether Google has a monopoly power dominance of a relevant market and whether they've abused that dominance or used it to exclude competitors and otherwise harm consumers. So the baseline for the laws about the same. Um. I do not know how many lawyers d o J has devoted to their investigation. I don't believe that's public. However, do o J has a large group of hundreds of

lawyers and dozens of economists. However, they're doing many other cases, criminal cases, civil cases, merger cases, and the states also have other things going. They do a lot of merger work in particularly healthcare and hospitals. They are also cooperate, and they also have individual cases that relate to their local economies. So you've got to well resourced sets of

people who are going down a parallel track. And I think the states and the federal government will at least be in contact with each other about publicly available information. But there's no evidence that are directly cooperating between the state and federal Yet for years, state and federal officials have basically been hands off with the big tech companies. Now it's like piling on all these different investigations going

on at the same time. Is this likely to be just a flash in the pan, you know, the investigations go on, it comes to nothing, as some investigations of Google have done before, or are there likely to be something you know, substantial remedies here. Well? Uh, I think it's more than a flash in the pan. I think, uh, the times have changed and that antitrust has become an important part of our political discourse in terms of Congress, in terms of the presidential campaign. I think that matters.

I think the laws go in cycles, and the times have turned to look at these firms that are dominant in various aspects of the tech sector. Now, whether these companies will be broken up is a different story. Uh. These are not criminal cases, so no one's going to jail. There are no fine on that are can be administered under the laws that these states are currently looking at enforcing. However, the courts can issue injunctions that can do one or

two things. Conceivably break up the company, which is a long shot, or require them to change their business behavior, which is the more likely scenario if the states or the d O J win or there's a settlement. This question. You may not know, and it may be a little unfair, but you know, you look at the investigation, the multi state investigation against Facebook, that's eight states, and you look at this one. What do you think made the difference here?

Is Google considered a worse actor? Well, you know, I don't know. Um. The states cooperate through an association called the National Association of Attorneys General. They are used to discussing which topics concern multiple states, and it's a you know, it's a it's a coalition of the willing. Whoever wants to get involved does. Some states just don't want to get involved for political reasons. Other states may not want

to get involved because of resource issues. To some extent, whatever happens will go to the benefit of all states, whether they're in the coalition or not. I mean virtually everybody's in on Google, and you know, if anything happens on Facebook, for example, causing them to divest um one of the businesses like What'sapp or you know, one of the other ones that they bought over the years, then obviously a state would benefit from that, whether they were

in the investigation or not. And finally, will the States or the FEDS have any benefit because of the work that was done in the EU, Well, I think I think that's part of why this is front and center

right now. The US has been lacking in important monopolization enforcement for well over a decade, probably twenty years since the Microsoft case, and Europe has picked up the flag has really been the primary enforcer, has set the bar for what is legal in a world economy, and these tech companies operate all over the world, and I think to some extent, the US is finally playing catch up. Thank you so much, Spencer, It's great to have you on again. That's Spencer while he's a professor at Loyola

University School of Law. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts. SoundCloud and on bloomberg dot com slash Podcast. I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg