Google headquarters, Mountain View, California.

An Atlanta-based digital advertising company that markets streaming and pop-up videos has sued Google—already under investigation by state attorneys general for possible antitrust activities—over claims the company is using its sweeping online presence to monopolize the online ad market.

The federal complaint, filed Tuesday in the Northern District of Georgia by Inform Inc., not only seeks damages and an injunction halting Google's allegedly monopolistic practices but also asks the court to break up the company into separate corporations individually focused on its own advertising business, Android services and Chrome web browser.

The suit asks that a "corporate monitor" be appointed to help break up the company and keep the court apprised "as to further divestment or reallocation of Google assets or further corporate government changes or board membership changes."

The suit said Inform, which creates and markets advertising and other content along with online video players, was averaging $37 million a year as recently as 2016, but "since that time Google has effectively put Inform out of business" by engaging in an array of illegal conduct in violation of federal and state law.

"Google's pattern of anticompetitive practices has thwarted competition on the merits and excluded Inform and other Google competitors from the relevant markets," the complaint said. "The result has been to eviscerate competition in multiple markets, harm consumers, degrade consumer choice and consumer privacy, and stifle innovation."

Google has used its dominance to "gain and monopolize power" by, among other things, coercing consumers and advertisers to use its products and platforms, and enforcing "exclusionary agreements that preclude companies from advertising, distributing, promoting, buying, or using products of competitors or potential competitors to Google's applications," the suit said. 

The complaint names Google, YouTube and its parent company, Alphabet, as defendants.  

With the world's most-used search engine, Chrome browser and ownership of the Android smartphone technology and Youtube, "Google has established a monopoly in the worldwide market for licensable mobile device operating systems," according to the lawsuit.

In order to compete in that market, "a company's services must be compatible with Google's stable of services and Google's Chrome browser," the complaint said. "Importantly, this has enabled Google to set arbitrary and anti-competitive rules by which video content and video advertisements are enabled, viewable and audible in ways that favor Google and Google's stable of products and services."

On at least one occasion, Google affirmatively interfered with an Inform customer, "sending them a screenshot to give them a 'heads up' when Inform's floating video player with that client's advertisement appeared next to content that Google misleadingly characterized as objectionable,'" it said. 

"Google obtained information about Inform's customer through Inform's forced usage of the Google ad server, took this information to Inform's customer and used it in an attempt to convince Inform's customer that Google offered superior services," it said. 

The suit accuses Google of violating U.S. Sherman Antitrust Act and Clayton Act provisions regarding monopolies and illegal restraint of trade, and tortious interference with Inform's business relationships. 

It seeks a declaration that Google's "leveraged monopolies constitute an unreasonable restraint of trade and are illegal" under the federal statutes, and an injunction barring any further violations as detailed in the complaint.

The suit was filed by John Herman, Peter Jones, Carlton Jones and Serena Vash of Atlanta's Herman Jones.

Herman said the lawsuit was long overdue. 

"The reality is that alarm bells have been ringing for years about Google's illegal monopolistic conduct," Herman said via email. "The complaint we filed today demonstrates how Google's predatory conduct effectively put Inform—and we believe multiple other digital advertising companies—out of business.

"This is the exact type of behavior the antitrust laws were designed to address and we are hopeful the court will do so," he said.

There was no immediate reply to a query sent to to Google's Mountain View headquarters on Tuesday.