The bill, led by Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, would bar companies with more than $20 billion in digital advertising revenue from owning the tools to help buy and sell online ads and operating the exchange where those transactions occur.
Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut are also sponsors on the bill, said the people, who declined to be identified because the plans to introduce the bill are not yet public. Google’s dominance in the advertising technology market — the tools used to buy, sell and display the online ads that help fund many websites — has been the subject of intense antitrust scrutiny.
That effort, which is being led by Texas, accuses Google and Facebook, the No. 1 and No. 2 players in online advertising, of reaching aBoth Facebook and Google deny that their agreement was illegal.