Google execs Pichai, Brin must sit for questioning in digital ads lawsuit

Google CEO Sundar Pichai and co-founder Sergey Brin must sit for questioning in the lawsuit brought by Texas and other states accusing the Alphabet GOOGL.O unit of abusing its dominance in the digital advertising market, a US judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Sean Jordan in Sherman, Texas issued the decision on Friday, ruling that Brin and Pichai could not avoid being deposed in the antitrust case.

The judge said the states “have identified issues related to significant corporate acquisitions, meetings, and policies relevant to the issues in this case.”

Texas and the other states contend that Google unlawfully monopolized critical parts of the display ads market, causing users to artificially pay higher prices. The states also accuse Google of deceptive trade practices.

Google and the Texas attorney general’s office on Monday did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Google had objected to the proposed depositions, arguing that Pichai and Brin, now a member of the tech giant’s board, have no unique and relevant personal information to share in the states’ lawsuit.

The company has denied the states’ claims. Its bid to dismiss the 2020 lawsuit is pending.

Brin’s deposition will be limited to two and a half hours and Pichai’s deposition was capped at four hours.

Texas and the 15 other state plaintiffs in the digital ads case said they want to question Brin about Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick in 2008, which the states have called “the leading provider of the ad server tools” that media publishers and others use to sell display advertising inventory.

They want to ask Pichai about an advertising market deal that Google made in 2018 with the social media platform Facebook. They also want to probe Google’s internal communication retention policies, after earlier raising concerns about potentially missing evidence.

The states had argued that any burden the depositions would place on Brin and Pichai “are entirely proportional to the stakes of this litigation.”

The trial is scheduled for March 2025.

The case is State of Texas et al v. Google LLC, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, No. 4:20-cv-00957-SDJ.

For plaintiffs: W. Mark Lanier of The Lanier Law Firm; and Ashley Keller of Keller Postman

For defendant: R. Paul Yetter of Yetter Coleman; Eric Mahr of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer; and Daniel Bitton of Axinn Veltrop & Harkrider. Reuters