This suit converts a rumor into a second front on search itself. In October, the DOJ and 11 all-Republican state AGs filed the first case over Google's search and search-ad monopolies, and by September Bloomberg had reported that other states were weighing complaints of their own rather than simply joining Washington. Politico then previewed this filing two days ago, noting the states would allege Google altered search design to hurt rivals.
What lands today, per the source report, is a genuinely bipartisan coalition of 30+ attorneys general accusing Google of favoring its own products in results — and, per the follow-up coverage, probing the same exclusionary default contracts with Apple the DOJ case targets. It is already Google's third antitrust suit, before the Play Store billing case arrives months later.
First-order effects
Google now defends overlapping federal and state cases aimed at the same search franchise, doubling discovery demands and legal exposure across two independent coalitions.
Apple's role as a paid default-search partner moves into crosshairs from two directions at once, since the state complaint includes those exclusionary contracts alongside the self-preferencing claims.
Second-order effects
Distribution partners and rival verticals reprice around litigation risk: any court finding against default-placement deals threatens the revenue stream Apple and other access points collect for search placement.
State enforcers demonstrate they can sustain a pipeline without DOJ — the same coalition structure resurfaces against Google's Play Store commission model, signaling each Google surface gets its own case.
Third-order effects
If parallel state and federal suits keep stacking, enforcement stops being a single removable event and becomes a standing condition, making default agreements — not just search ranking — the structural battleground for how users reach information online.
The trend: Antitrust pressure on Google is fragmenting into many simultaneous state-led fronts, each peeling at a different layer of its search-and-defaults distribution stack.
This is MASSIVE. Texas AG: “Shortly after FB acquired WhatsApp, in 2015, FB signed an exclusive agreement with Google, *granting Google access to millions of Americans' end-to-end encrypted WhatsApp messages, photos, videos, and audio files.*” @erbrod @eileenguo @nxthompson
OK, whew. I've now read all 130 pages of state AGs suit v Google. In three words, Google is royally screwed. Expect... Press headlines: Facebook and Google colluded! Deeper dives: Google turned open web into a walled garden of tying, exclusionary tactics, and privacy fixing.
One of the most interesting parts of this Texas complaint is an allegation that Google diffused a threat from Facebook by agreeing to give it special advantages in ad auctions. If true, an obvious anticompetitive move by both parties
“As internal Google documents reveal, Google sought to kill competition and has done so through an array of exclusionary tactics, including an unlawful agreement with Facebook, its largest potential competitive threat, to manipulate advertising auctions.” https://www.courtlistene…
@alexstamos @ceciliakang If the GDrive backup was unencrypted content (ie Google could mine it), and Google and FB didn't make that clear, then that seems like a problem.
if that's the case and the rest of the Texas filing is this messy, i'd understand why 30+ AGs decided to sue Google separately https://www.reuters.com/...
Let's see here. 12 states signed on to federal suit, after California joined late. 10 states total listed in the Texas suit. If we get to 30+ in this suit, some states have to be doubling up ... https://twitter.com/...
BIG TECH.🖥️ “Texas plans to hire Ken Starr, the former independent counsel in the investigation that led to President Bill Clinton's impeachment, to represent the state in an antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet Inc.'s GOOGLE”... https://www.newsmax.com/...