Several US states accuse senior executives from Google and Facebook parent company Meta of being directly involved in illegal collusion for a dominant position in online advertising.

The Texas-led coalition filed a revised version of its December 2020 lawsuit against Google on Friday (local time).

According to this, Google boss Sundar Pichai and his deputy Philipp Schindler as well as apparently Meta co-managing director Sheryl Sandberg were involved in the agreements.

The states accuse Google of manipulating online ad auctions to eliminate any competition.

The auctions are a sophisticated system that decides which advertisements appear on websites based on anonymous user profiles.

According to the prosecutors of the states involved, Google and Facebook reached an agreement in September 2018. This was signed by Schindler and the “CEO and member of the Facebook board, who herself had headed the advertising department at Google for a while”.

This Facebook representative's name has been redacted.

However, the information shows that it must be Sandberg. 

The lawsuit also cites an email to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that appears to have come from Sandberg.

It describes the agreement with Google as "strategically very important".

It goes on to say, "We are close to signing and need approval to proceed." The lawsuit also states that the deal was also "personally approved" by Pichai, who runs Google and its parent company Alphabet .

More lawsuits against Google

Google rejected the allegations.

A company spokeswoman said on Saturday that the lawsuit was "full of inaccuracies and without legal basis".

Google will continue to "resolutely defend itself against these unsubstantiated allegations" in court.

The spokeswoman also denied that Pichai signed the relevant agreement.

The internet giant has repeatedly denied allegations of market manipulation.

In its response to a request from the AFP news agency, Meta spoke of a "non-exclusive bidding agreement with Google".

Meta has also made similar agreements with other platforms, thereby increasing competition in the placement of advertising.

Two other lawsuits by the US authorities are directed against Google.

In one of them, the US government accuses the company of an "illegal monopoly" in online search and online advertising.

The lawsuit, filed in October, could lead to a split of the internet giant.

According to the market research company eMarketer, Google had a 28.6 percent share of the global online advertising market last year.

It was followed by Facebook with a market share of 23.7 percent.