More than 30 states added to Google’s mushrooming legal woes on Thursday, accusing the Silicon Valley titan of illegally arranging its search results to push out smaller rivals. The prosecutors also accused the company of using exclusive deals with phone makers like Apple to prioritize Google’s search service over rivals like Firefox and DuckDuckGo. That suppression, the states said in their lawsuit, has locked in Google’s nearly 90 percent market dominance in search and has made it impossible for the smaller companies to grow into formidable competitors. Google has sought to extend that dominance to new venues like home voice assistants, said the prosecutors, from states including Colorado, Nebraska, New York and Utah. The cascade of lawsuits against Google, which the company says it will fight in court, are indicative of the growing backlash against the largest tech companies, a movement that increasingly looks like it will usher in major changes for some of the world’s most popular digital services.

Source: New York Times December 17, 2020 17:55 UTC