Publishers file European antitrust complaint against Google

The Google monopoly ‘rife with conflicts of interest’: Publishers file European antitrust complaint against tech giant over its stranglehold on advertising and ‘unlawful tactics’ that threaten the future of media

• European Publishers Council is complaining about Google’s digital advertising 
• EPC complaint seeks to ‘break the ad tech stranglehold Google currently has’ 
• The group says the European Commission is now in a ‘unique position’ to act 
• Commission can take into account the findings of several authorities, EPC says

Publishers have filed a Europe-wide antitrust complaint against Google accusing it of using ‘unlawful tactics’ to monopolise online advertising and crush competition – giving it a stranglehold over the industry that threatens the free press.

The European Publishers Council (EPC), a group of Chairmen and CEOs of the continent’s leading media groups, has today revealed it is complaining to the European Commission about the tech giant’s digital advertising practices.

They say Google’s advertising platform is ‘rife with conflicts of interests’ because it is acting as buyer and the seller in the same transaction, while also operating the auction house in the middle in a monopoly that harms publishers and consumers across Europe.

The Silicon Valley firm’s position has been compared to ‘Goldman or Citibank owning the New York Stock Exchange’ because it controls both buy-side and sell-side advertising brokers.

Figures show that one of Google’s advertising auction programs dropped publisher revenue by 40%, and there are fears changes to its cookie technology could hit revenues by up to 70%

Meanwhile it takes advantage of its dominant position to increase its market share at the expense of customers who are locked into Google products.

The EPC’s complaint is the latest in a string of antitrust lawsuits and complaints being filed against the tech giant across the world over its anti-competitive tactics.

In June the French competition authority fined Google €220 million for abusing its dominance of online advertising to unfairly favour its own services and in November Italy’s antitrust watchdog fined it €11.2millon for ‘aggressive methods’.

In the UK, the tech giant has been subject to an antitrust investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority investigation over the introduction of its new advertising plan the Privacy Sandbox. 

Today the CMA announced Google had agreed to a set of commitments which will give the regulator oversight of how Privacy Sandbox is introduced.

And in the US Google is facing a Texas antitrust lawsuit that accuses it of rigging the online advertising market, increasing costs to advertisers while rewarding publishers who give it preferred access.

European publishers have now gone to the the European Commission with a complaint which seeks to ‘break the ad tech stranglehold Google currently has over press publishers’, that it says threatens the future viability of funding a free and pluralistic press across the continent.

The group claims that since its acquisition of internet advertising company DoubleClick in 2008, Google has embarked on a ‘barrage of unlawful tactics to foreclose competition in ad tech’.

The European Publishers Council (EPC), a group of Chairmen and CEOs of the continent’s leading media groups, has today revealed it is complaining about the tech giant’s digital advertising business 

The EPC said in a statement: ‘This strategy paid off, and Google has achieved end-to-end control of the ad tech value chain, boasting market shares as high as 90-100% in segments of the ad tech chain.

‘Google’s ad tech suite is rife with conflicts of interests, as Google represents the buyer and the seller in the same transaction, while also operating the auction house in the middle, and selling its own inventory.

‘Far from managing its conflicts, Google has time and again taken advantage of its position to prioritize its own two self-interests at the expense of the very customers it is supposed to serve.’

Google made £108 billion ($147 billion) in revenue from online ads in 2020, more than any other company in the world, with ads including search, YouTube and Gmail accounting for the bulk of its overall sales and profits.

About 16% of its revenue came from the company’s display or network business, in which other media companies use Google technology to sell ads on their website and apps.

The group says the European Commission – which opened an investigation in June into whether Google favours its own online advertising services – is now in a ‘unique position’ to act because it can take into account the findings of several authorities 

The publishers’ trade body, whose members include Axel Springer, News UK, Conde Nast, Bonnier News and Editorial Prensa Iberica, as well as MailOnline’s owner Daily Mail and General Trust, took its grievance to the European Commission, alleging Google has an ad tech stranglehold over press publishers.

‘It is high time for the European Commission to impose measures on Google that actually change, not just challenge, its behaviour,’ EPC Chairman Christian Van Thillo said in a statement.

‘Google has achieved end-to-end control of the ad tech value chain, boasting market shares as high as 90-100% in segments of the ad tech chain,’ he said.

European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who has fined Google more than 8 billion euros ($9.2 billion) in recent years for anti-competitive practices in three cases, last year launched the investigation into Google’s digital advertising business.

Google has said it would engage constructively with the Commission.

Last month it was claimed in a Texas lawsuit that Google manipulated the advertising marketplace before pocketing the money and giving it to publishers who gave the company preferred access.

The search giant was accused of running a digital advertising monopoly that increased the cost to advertisers and harmed ad industry competitors and publishers.

It was alleged that the firm began a secret program called Project Bernanke in 2013 which rigged the market by dropping the second-highest bids from publishers’ advertising auctions.

It was said to have used historical data from Google adverts to adjust its clients’ bids for online advertising and boost their chances of winning auctions for impressions, allegedly generating hundreds of millions of dollars for the company.

A Google spokesman told MailOnline: ‘Online advertising underpins much of the content we enjoy and learn from online. 

‘It has enabled millions of small businesses to afford advertising for the first time, and for news publishers big and small, it’s created new opportunities and substantial new revenue streams that did not exist in the print age. 

‘When publishers choose to use our advertising services, they keep the majority of revenue and every year we pay out billions of dollars directly to the publishing partners in our ad network.’

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