A San Francisco federal judge is weighing class-action certification for an investor lawsuit against Alphabet Inc. Plaintiffs allege Google misled markets regarding online advertising auctions to artificially inflate its stock price. The subsequent share price decline reportedly erased hundreds of billions of dollars in market value.
The lawsuit claims Alphabet leveraged its digital advertising dominance to prioritize its own products. Alphabet already faces separate mass arbitration demands for billions of dollars in damages from advertisers. Those proceedings follow previous rulings that labeled the company's ad technology business an illegal monopoly. Granting class-action status would consolidate individual claims into a single legal challenge against the company.