Sundar PichaiCEO of Google, and Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta, have been accused of personally approving a secret advertising deal that granted Facebook special privileges on Google's advertising platform.
This new scandal involving the tech giants comes to light from an antitrust complaint filed by a coalition of US states led by Texas. The lawsuit was filed in a new version in a New York court on Friday, December 14, after being initially launched against Google in December 2020. The plaintiffs allege that the company manipulated its advertising auction mechanism to favor Facebook. Google also offered optimized data to Facebook to allow it greater analytical advantage. The agreement was signed in September 2018 by Philipp Schindler, vice president and director of sales and operations of Google's advertising arm, and Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer and member of the Facebook board of directors, who previously headed advertising at Google.
The illegal partnership between the two fiercest competitors in the digital advertising market has reportedly been dubbed by Google as Blue Jedi, in reference to Star Wars.
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