Daily Mail hits Google with antitrust lawsuit
The owner of the Daily Mail has filed an antitrust suit against Google in Manhattan federal court, alleging that the company manipulates search results based on how much publishers spend on advertising with the search engine giant.
“This lawsuit is to hold Google to account for their
continued anti-competitive behavior including manipulation of ad auctions and
news search results, bid-rigging, algorithm bias and exploiting its market
power to harm their advertising rivals,” a Daily Mail spokesperson said in a
statement.
Google has suppressed its coverage of royal family drama
this year, which has not shown up prominently in keyword search results like
“Meghan and Harry” and “Prince Philip” a spokesperson said.
A search of the keyword “Piers Morgan,” who writes a column
for the paper, retrieves results from the Guardian, the Independent and other
outlets before the Daily Mail, the spokesman added.
The UK-based site, which has 75 million unique monthly
visitors in the US, earns 80 percent of its revenue from website ads — 99
percent of which are sold on exchanges.
But Google, the suit says, has rigged the system by
unlawfully controlling more than 50 percent of the exchange market and 90
percent of the software used to sell the online ads, which has become a $125
billion industry.
“Google manipulates the process of real-time bidding to
exclude rival exchanges, underpay for publisher inventory and ultimately reduce
the quality and quantity of online news,” this suit alleges.
In response, the Daily Mail changed the way it sold ads,
circumventing Google’s stranglehold on the process and steering profits away
from the tech behemoth. The move increased the Daily Mail’s online ad revenue
by 124 percent, but Google retaliated, the filing charges.
In June 2019, the Daily Mail disappeared overnight in
Google’s search results after the company rolled out a new “Core Algorithm
Update.”
The search suppression continued for three months until
Google allegedly forced the publisher to sell twice as much ad inventory on its
exchange — even though the company was
paying the Daily Mail half as much for each ad slot, the suit alleges.
“Typically, these modifications are made unannounced and
with no transparency,” according to the court papers.
The suit against Google, which controls 88 percent of website
searches, seeks unspecified damages and court intervention to halt the
company’s alleged misconduct.
Google is already facing antitrust lawsuits from the Justice
Department and several attorneys general over alleged search monopolies.
The company has insisted it has done nothing wrong.
“The Daily Mail’s claims are completely inaccurate,” said a
Google spokesperson. “The use of our ad tech tools has no bearing on how a
publisher’s website ranks in Google Search. More generally, we compete in a
crowded and competitive ad tech space where publishers have and exercise
multiple options. The Daily Mail itself authorizes dozens of ad tech companies
to sell and manage their ad space, including Amazon, Verizon and more. We will
defend ourselves against these meritless claims.”
Comments
Post a Comment