Google sued by publishers in UK for £3.4 billion

Beijing time on the evening of March 31, it was reported that Google was hit with a new class action lawsuit in the UK today, accusing Google of abusing its dominant position in the online advertising business and seeking compensation of 3.4 billion pounds (approximately US$4.2 billion, Note on this site: currently approximately 28.934 billion yuan).

This class action lawsuit was initiated by Charles Arthur, the former technology editor of the British "Guardian" on behalf of the publisher. Alleges Google illegally exploited its dominance of online advertising to reduce the revenue publishers can earn from those ads.

Google said it would vigorously crack down on this "speculative" behavior.

The case is the second such lawsuit Google has faced since November. At that time, Claudio Pollack, the former director of the British Communications Authority (Ofcom), filed a similar lawsuit against Google, requiring Google to pay up to 13.6 billion pounds (about 16.8 billion U.S. dollars, this site’s note: currently about 115.736 billion U.S. dollars) RMB) damages.

Both cases involve Google’s ad technology that determines in less than a second which online ads consumers will see, how much they will cost, and how much publishers will receive income. This online display advertising is a major source of revenue for many websites.

Currently, the UK’s antitrust regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), is investigating Google’s dominance in advertising technology.

Today, Arthur stated in the lawsuit: "The CMA is currently investigating Google's anti-competitive behavior in the field of advertising technology, but they do not have the power to require Google to compensate those who have suffered heavy losses. Therefore, we can only pass It's up to the courts to right this wrong, which is why I filed this lawsuit."

And Google said: "Our advertising tools, and the tools of many of our ad technology competitors, are helping millions websites and apps to fund their content and enable businesses of all sizes to effectively reach new customers.

In addition to the UK, the US Department of Justice also accused Google in January of participating in a systemic campaign , undermining fair competition in the ad tech industry by wresting control of a host of high-tech tools used by publishers. But yesterday, Google asked a court to dismiss the case, saying the U.S. government had exaggerated its control of the market.

In addition, as early as 2021, the French antitrust regulator "Autorité de la concurrence" (Autorité de la concurrence) imposed a fine of 220 million euros (approximately 230 million U.S. dollars) on Google. Notes on this site: currently about 1.648 billion yuan ) for favoring its own services in online advertising.

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