Nine more US states join federal lawsuit against Google over ad tech

Nine states, including Michigan and Nebraska, have joined a US Department of Justice lawsuit against Alphabet’s Google which alleges the search and advertising company broke antitrust law in running its digital advertising business, the department said on Monday.

The states joining the lawsuit were Arizona, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Washington and West Virginia, the department said.

The government, which filed the ad tech lawsuit in January along with eight states, had argued that Google should be forced to sell its ad manager suite because it illegally abused its dominance of online advertising.