The Competition and Transparency in Digital Advertising Act, introduced by Sen. Mike Lee , would ban online companies with more than $20 billion in digital ad revenue annually from participating in more than one part of the digital advertising process. The bill would affect Google and possibly Amazon.
The bill would likely require Google and others that violate the law to divest significant portions of their digital advertising business, thereby forcing such companies to break up.
One focus of the legislation is Google, which uses its dominant position in the marketplace to take a cut of 22%-42% on every ad bought in its system, typically double or quadruple what other digital advertisers charge, according to a lawsuit filed by 16 state attorneys general late last year. The company, which is the most visited website in the United States with billions of users worldwide, controls two of the biggest third-party ad companies on the internet, and Google's subsidiary YouTube accounts for 43% of the online video advertising market.