Gannett, the largest US newspaper publisher, has filed a lawsuit against Google and its parent company Alphabet. The lawsuit alleges Google has participated in a ‘deceptive scheme’ to gain an illegal monopoly over the digital advertising space.
The lawsuit states, “Publishers are not suffering because readers demand less online content. Growing numbers of U.S. readers get their news online, and spending on online advertising to reach those readers has exploded. Rather, publishers do not see the growing ad spending because Google and its parent Alphabet unlawfully have acquired and maintain monopolies for the advertising technology (“ad tech”) tools that publishers and advertisers use to buy and sell online ad space.”
“Google controls how publishers sell their ad slots, and it forces publishers to sell growing shares of that ad space to Google at depressed prices. The result is dramatically less revenue for publishers and Google’s ad-tech rivals, while Google enjoys exorbitant monopoly profits.”
“Virtually all major U.S. news publishers, and many thousands of smaller publishers, use a ‘publisher ad server’ to manage their inventory of impressions. Among other core functions, the ad server identifies when an impression is available for sale, solicits bids for the impression, and ultimately chooses which bid is the winner. Google’s publisher ad server, DoubleClick for Publishers (‘DFP’), controls over 90% of the publisher-ad-server market.”
The lawsuit represents yet another regulatory headache for Alphabet, which already faces multiple pending antitrust probes from the Justice Department over its search business, digital ad practices and other elements of its sprawling business empire.
A separate effort to crack down on Google’s digital ad dominance is underway in Europe, where regulators have signaled they may force the company to sell off part of its digital ad tech platform.
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Digital advertising is the most profitable piece of Google’s business, generating $224.5 billion in revenue last year. That figure amounted to nearly 80% of the company’s overall revenue.
Gannett’s CEO Mike Reed said in a statement, “News publishers depend on digital ad revenue to provide timely, cutting-edge reporting and essential content communities rely on, yet Google’s practices have had negative implications that depress not only revenue, but also force the reduction and footprint of local news. Without free and fair competition for digital ad space, publishers cannot invest in their newsrooms.”
In addition to allegations in the lawsuit, The Gateway Pundit has reported on the mirage of ways that Google attempts to control ad revenue to push their agenda. In 2020, Project Veritas shared an undercover video of a Google Ad manager admitting how the company can offer free advertising credits to Democrats and “censor out news from your search engine” … “or actually stopping right-wing parties from advertising.”
If you control the revenue, you control the voices that are allowed to be heard.
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