GannettAmerica’s largest newspaper chain filed suit Tuesday Googleaccused the social media company of violating federal antitrust law by trying to monopolize the market for online advertising.
The publisher of USA Today and more than 200 dailies said in a complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan that the media is suffering because Google and its parent company Alphabet Monopoly tool for buying and selling ads online.
Gannett said this forces publishers to sell more ad space to Google at depressed prices, resulting in “dramatically lower revenues for publishers and Google’s ad-tech rivals, while Google enjoys enormous monopoly profits”. Is.”
Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Gannett is seeking unspecified damages.
It filed its lawsuit five months after the US Justice Department filed a similar lawsuit against Google over the Mountain View, California-based company’s advertising technology.
On June 14, the European Union filed its case and said that Google may have to sell some of its advertising technology.
Google is expected to generate $224.5 billion (roughly Rs. 18,42,777 crores) of advertising revenue in 2022, roughly 80 percent of Alphabet’s total revenue, and generate an overall profit of $60 billion (roughly Rs. 4,92,506 crores).
Advertising allows Google to provide many of its services for free, including email and most of its YouTube video platform.
Google’s first quarter advertising revenue was $54.5 billion (roughly Rs. 4,47,360 crores), little changed from a year ago.
Like many newspaper publishers, McLean, Virginia-based Gannett has struggled in recent years with falling advertising revenue and more people getting their news online.
Gannett said print circulation at its newspapers would fall by nearly 20 percent in 2020 and 2021 and it has shuttered more than 170 publications since 2019, when it merged with Gatehouse Media.
Online digital advertising in the United States has grown nearly eightfold since 2009 to a $200 billion (roughly Rs. 16,41,689 crores) business, according to the lawsuit, but newspaper advertising revenue has declined by nearly 70 percent during that time. .
The case is Gannett Co. v. Google LLC et al., US District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 23-05177.
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