Report from the Press Gazette
In Brief – More than 20 European news publishers from eight countries have launched a lawsuit against Google seeking over €640 million in damages, alleging the company’s dominance in advertising technology harmed their businesses by suppressing competition and reducing advertising revenues. The claims build on the European Commission’s decision last September to fine Google €2.95 billion for abusing its position in the online advertising technology market and stated that affected parties could pursue separate compensation claims. Central to the case are commission findings that Google held dominant positions across multiple parts of the AdTech ecosystem, including publisher ad servers, ad-buying tools, and ad exchanges. Regulators concluded that Google favored its own ad exchange, AdX, by giving it advantages in advertising auctions and steering demand from its advertising platforms toward AdX. According to the publishers, these practices distorted competition and depressed advertising prices. Google responded to the lawsuits saying, “These allegations are meritless. Advertisers and publishers have many choices and when they choose Google’s ad tech tools it’s because they are effective, affordable and easy to use.”
Context – As Google has lost major antitrust decisions, it has faced a growing number of “follow-on” civil antitrust lawsuits. For example, dozens of online comparison-shopping sites in Europe have filed lawsuits aiming to win damages from Google following the final resolution of the European Commission’s Google Shopping antitrust case. In the US, local search platform Yelp, a leading critic of Google, has filed a civil antitrust lawsuit in federal court that hopes to build on US District Judge Amit Mehta’s landmark ruling in 2024 that Google’s general search service was a monopoly under US antitrust law. Canada-based Index Exchange, an AdTech firm, has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google in US federal court that aims to win damages based on US District Judge Leonie Brinkema’s April 2025 ruling that Google willfully maintained monopoly power in the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets.