Google Asks Court to Dismiss Texas Antitrust Case

“Despite amassing a lengthy collection of grievances, each one comes down to a plea for Google to share its data or to design its products in ways that would help its rivals,” Google said in its filing.

Texas’ attorney general, Ken Paxton, said in a statement: “Google’s motion attributes their monopoly status to pure success on the merits. The company whose motto was once ‘Don’t Be Evil’ now asks the world to examine their egregious monopoly abuses and see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.”

Google faces pressure from governments around the world. In addition to the lawsuit from Texas and more than a dozen other states, the federal government and a different group of states have sued the company, arguing it has abused a monopoly over online search. On Thursday, a Senate committee endorsed an antitrust law meant to crack down on some of its practices — along with Amazon’s and Apple’s — and European lawmakers in Brussels are considering their own new digital antitrust rules.

Google is also not the first tech giant to try to get a recent government antitrust case dismissed. Last year, Facebook asked a federal court to throw out lawsuits filed against it by the Federal Trade Commission and a collection of states. The judge in the case initially agreed. But the F.T.C. refiled its lawsuit, and the judge said this month that it could move forward. The states have appealed.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/technology/google-texas-antitrust-case.html