Texas AG Ken Paxton: $170 Million FTC Fine Was ‘Pocket Change’ for Google

Ken Paxton, the Attorney General of Texas, told SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight this week that Google is largely unaffected by the recent $170 million fine they received from the Federal Trade Commission over charges that they illegally collected and shared data from children on YouTube. According to Paxton, “The FTC fine was pocket change for part of the day for Google.”

Ken Paxton, the Attorney General of Texas, joined Breitbart News Tonight hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak on Tuesday night to discuss the investigation into potential antitrust violations by Google that has been undertaken by 50 states and territories. Paxton noted that his office is primarily focused on Google’s advertisement business, which charges large premiums on advertising space due to the lack of competition in the online advertising marketplace.

“Right now we are really focused on the ad-tech side, which means their advertising policies. So few people really know about it, think about it, understand know how dominant it appears Google is. They don’t realize that so many, even small businesses, can’t even advertise because they can’t afford it because there is such premium pricing because there are no competitors in the marketplace,” Paxton said.

“We are talking about a massive worldwide market that one company controls. And every time it seems like somebody tries to get in to compete, they get bought up or they get knocked out by some new way of Google gaining control. And therefore, competition totally kills them,” Paxton continued. “There’s like a whole zone where no one will step in and compete against Google.”

Breitbart News reported last week that the Federal Trade Commission fined Google $170 million over charges that YouTube illegally collected and shared data from child users. “The FTC’s fine of $170 million, if you think about it, Google makes $117 billion a year in advertising. I don’t think that $170 million is much of an incentive for them to stop doing anything that is in violation of the law. It’s just like the cost of doing business, it’s a relatively small cost. The FTC fine was pocket change for part of the day for Google,” Paxton said.

Paxton told Breitbart News that the battle against Google is taking place in countries around the world. “We would be operating under state antitrust laws. However, at the same time, the Department of Justice, who we have met with, and the Attorney General and his leading staff, they are also interested at looking at what’s going on with Google,” Paxton said. “You will see state governments coming at it from a state government perspective and the federal government coming at it from the federal aspect. And, honestly, there is international interest in there, even Australia is interested in what we are doing because it affects the entire world.”