Gannett is suing Google, accusing Google of dominating the advertising market
Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain, filed a lawsuit against Google on Tuesday, accusing the tech giant of violating federal antitrust laws by illegally abusing a monopoly over the technology publishers use to buy and sell online ads.
In the complaintfiled in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Google and its parent company, Alphabet, Gannett argued that Google’s dominance of the digital advertising market has significantly reduced potential revenue for those publishers.
The complaint said that while the online advertising market was worth $200 billion a year, news publishers have seen a nearly 70 percent drop in ad revenue since 2009, cutting journalism jobs and putting many newspapers out of business.
“Google controls how publishers sell their ad spaces and it forces publishers to sell a growing portion of that ad space to Google at low prices,” the lawsuit said. “The result is dramatically less revenue for publishers and Google’s ad-tech rivals, while Google enjoys exorbitant monopoly profits.”
The case is the latest in a series of lawsuits filed against Google over its advertising practices. In January, the Justice Department filed an antitrust case against Google to break its digital advertising monopoly, while the European Commission filed a similar case on June 14. investigation of Google’s advertising practices.
“News publishers rely on digital ad revenue to provide timely, cutting-edge reporting and essential content that communities rely on,” Mike Reed, Gannett’s CEO, said in a statement. turnover, but also enforce the reduction and footprint of local news.”
Gannett publishes USA Today and more than 200 daily newspapers nationwide, including The Arizona Republic and The Palm Beach Post. The publisher said in the lawsuit that it had shut down more than 170 publications since 2019.
Dan Taylor, vice president of Google Ads, commented Tuesday on the lawsuit: “These claims simply don’t add up.”
Mr Taylor said publishers had many options for advertising technology and that when they used Google tools they “retained the vast majority of revenue”.
“We will show the court how our advertising products benefit publishers and help them fund their content online,” added Mr. Taylor.
Google earned nearly 80 percent of its $60 billion in profits last year from advertising, which powers popular services like search, YouTube and email.