An antitrust lawsuit against Google has been changed to take account of changes in ad tracking in Chrome. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the multi-state lawsuit, which focuses on Google’s advertising technology, in December. Meanwhile, five more attorney generals (from Alaska, Florida, Montana, Nevada and Puerto Rico) joined the action, totaling 15.
AGs say Google has taken advantage of its dominant market positions in search, video and other areas to eliminate smaller ad networks and effectively require advertisers to use its platform. The updated process includes a section on Google’s Privacy Sandbox, which deals in part with the use of anonymous data to deliver relevant ads to large groups. Google plans to block third-party tracking cookies in Chrome by 2022.
The lawsuit accuses Google of hiding “its true intentions behind a pretext of privacy” and suggests that the changes put “Google’s Chrome browser at the center of crawling and targeting.” non-Google publishers currently use it to track targeted users and ads “and argues that the move would force” pressure advertisers to transfer money that would be spent on smaller publishers to Google, “such as local newspapers.
“Attorney General Paxton’s latest allegations mischaracterize many aspects of our business, including the steps we are taking with the Privacy Sandbox initiative to protect people’s privacy as they browse the web,” Google told Engadget in a statement. “These efforts were welcomed by privacy advocates, advertisers and our own rivals as a step forward in preserving user privacy and protecting free content. We will defend ourselves strongly against AG Paxton’s baseless claims in court.”
The United Kingdom also announced an investigation into the Privacy Sandbox earlier this year.
Google recently unveiled the next phase of its plan to block cookies while maintaining its advertising business. He said he would stop selling ads based on individual browsing history and that he would no longer make tools to track a user’s data in his own products.
Update 16/03 16:44 ET: Added Google statement.