Google defends its partnership with Facebook, denies states’ claim of anticompetitive advantage

Google defends its partnership with Facebook, denies states’ claim of anticompetitive advantage

Google on Sunday disputed claims from a group of attorneys general, led by Texas' Ken Paxton, that its ad-buying arrangement with Facebook was anticompetitive.In a blog post, Google's director of economic policy Adam Cohen called the lawsuit from 10 Republican-led states "misleading." The statement is Google's most extensive response yet to the lawsuit, which is also the only one to name Facebook as a "co-conspirator." The company faces two other complaints from a bipartisan group of attorneys general and from the Justice Department. The statement followed a New York Times article earlier on Sunday that described more details of the alleged arrangement, citing an unredacted draft of the complaint. The Wall Street Journal previously reported on the unredacted draft in December.According to that version of the complaint as described by the Times, a Google executive saw an "existential threat" in Facebook's 2017 announcement that it was testing a move into the ad space. Facebook was considering a project in header bidding at the time, a form of