Big Tech firms allegedly agreed to ‘cooperate and assist one another’ in case of anti-trust suits

The lawsuit states that the two tech giants had a "deal in September 2018 in which Facebook agreed not to compete with Google's online advertising tools in return for special treatment when it used them."

A draft of the legal complaint alleges that Facebook and Google agreed to defend each other in the case of an anti-trust suit.

The suit also alleges that Google and Facebook agreed not to compete with each other and gave each other unique concessions in an effort to create monopolies and shut out competition, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Authorities became privy to an internal communication within Google dated November of 2017. In that communication, a "Facebook Partnership" was discussed for the "Top Partner Council" of Google. The text of the communication also mentioned the need to "collaborate when necessary to maintain status quo…"

These comments were discerned from the redacted version of the complaint. It appears that Facebook sent an internal email to CEO Mark Zuckerberg strongly suggesting that the company agree to the deal Google was offering.

"It isn't fair that Google effectively eliminated its competition and crowned itself the head of online advertising," Paxton said in a statement.

The lawsuit states that both companies demonstrated awareness that their special agreement "could trigger antitrust investigations and discussed how to deal with them" at the time.

The deal also included a clause where they would mutually "promptly and fully inform the Other Party of any Governmental Communication Related to the Agreement."

Google and Facebook have both disputed the allegations.

"There's nothing exclusive about their [Facebook's] involvement and they don't receive data that is not similarly made available to other buyers," claimed a Google spokesperson.

"Any allegation that this harms competition or any suggestion of misconduct on the part of Facebook is baseless," a Facebook spokesperson said in turn.

Ten attorney generals are now on board with the lawsuit lead by Texas's Ken Paxton, similar to another federal suit filed on Oct. 20 of this year.