The attorney behind a major class-action lawsuit against Google claims that advances in artificial intelligence give the digital monopoly almost unlimited power to control lives, influence thought and shape society.
“When the average person interacts with the internet, Google monitors and controls everything,” John C. Herman, of Herman Jones LLP in Atlanta, told Fox News Digital.
“From the search results, to the advertisements, to the web pages themselves, Google controls it all,” he said.
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Google has moved to dismiss the case.
The Department of Justice filed a substantially similar complaint against Google in January.
It has since been joined by attorneys general from 17 states, ranging from deep red states (Nebraska, West Virginia) to deep blue states (California, New York).
“Google is the largest monopoly in United States history,” the McDaniel lawsuit claims.
“Google’s breathtaking monopoly power has been amassed and maintained by engaging in strategic acquisitions and illegal anticompetitive practices for many years,” the lawsuit also says.
McDaniel, Herman’s client, filed the lawsuit claiming that Google’s alleged monopoly on digital advertising threatened to put his small publishing company out of business.
Google controlled 90% of the publisher ad-serving market, and 92% of the internet search market, as of 2020, according to the lawsuit. Its near-total control likely has grown since then, experts say.
He also said that he believes the algorithm favors certain agencies or companies — and that “this smells to high heaven to me.”
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Google, he claimed, can erase the digital footprint of rivals, nuisance companies or just about anyone it wants.
“If there is any reason to have antitrust laws in the 21st century, Google is the reason.”
McDaniel denies that label, saying his site is free for consumers to use and that the sweepstakes it features are promotional events by independent parties.
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Not everyone agrees that products like Bard give Google newfound power.
The complaints allege that Google already has proven its willingness and ability to destroy any competitor for digital advertising dollars.
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The Department of Justice wrote in a statement in January, “Over the past 15 years, Google has engaged in a course of anticompetitive and exclusionary conduct that has consisted of neutralizing or eliminating ad tech competitors through acquisitions, wielding its dominance across digital advertising markets to force more publishers and advertisers to use its products, and thwarting the ability to use competing products.”
Google’s digital monopoly is now armed with an artificial intelligence product that even the company’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, admitted in April that he and other experts do not understand, Fox News Digital previously reported.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) claims that “over the past 15 years, Google has engaged in a course of anticompetitive and exclusionary conduct.” (Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
“There is an aspect of this which we call — all of us in the field — call it a black box,” Pichai said in an interview with “60 Minutes.”
“You don’t fully tell why it said this, or why it got wrong. We have some ideas, and our ability to understand this gets better over time, but that’s where the state of the art is.”
The Google spokesperson added that the company is “working with the ecosystem,” including news publishers, to get their input and improve the product.
Fox News Digital reached out to Google for additional comment.