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The case largely echoes an antitrust action in the United States and seeks to force Google to sell off sections of its online ad business.
Canada’s competition authority on Thursday accused Google of abusing its tools for buying and selling online advertising to create a monopoly, and filed a complaint seeking to force the company to sell two of its main advertising technology services.
The case strikes at the heart of Google’s business and echoes an ongoing U.S. antitrust lawsuit against the Silicon Valley giant.
Both cases come amid four other lawsuits filed in the United States against Google since 2020 and other efforts by officials around the world to reign in the power that large technological companies like Google, Amazon and Apple hold over information and commerce online.
Canada is also attempting to use new laws to limit harms caused by social media and to require tech companies to compensate traditional news organizations.
In a statement, Canada’s Bureau of Competition Policy, a law enforcement agency, charged that Google has used its position as the largest provider of software for buying and selling ads, its marketplace for ad auctions and its services for showcasing the ads to illegally dominate the sector.
The company’s conduct, it said, ensured that the Alphabet-owned Google “would maintain and entrench its market power,” adding that it “locks market participants into using its own ad tech tools, prevents rivals from being able to compete on the merits of their offering.”