Zuckerberg and Google CEO approved deal to carve up ad market, states allege in court

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai personally approved a secret deal that gave the social network a leg up in the search giant’s online advertising auctions, attorneys for Texas and other states alleged in newly unsealed court filings. The 2018 deal gave Facebook possibly unlawful advantages when the social network used Google’s advertising exchange, according to Texas, 14 other states and Puerto Rico in the latest version of their federal antitrust suit against Google. The two companies denied that the arrangement was illegal. Google also described the lawsuit as baseless and "full of inaccuracies." The states originally filed the suit against Google in December 2020 and updated that with a heavily redacted version of their most recent complaint in November 2021. They refiled a version with far fewer deletions on January 14 after a judge in New York ruled that the additional details should be made public.