A 25-billion pound lawsuit has been slapped on Google, according to news reports. The US technology major is facing a legal case in the UK and EU that accuses it of anti-competitive conduct in the digital advertising market space.
Google, a key player in the online ad market as well as being a dominant force in search, is accused of abusing its power in the ad tech market, which coordinates the sale of online advertising space between publishers and advertisers.
Damien Geradin, of the Belgian law firm Geradin Partners, which is involved in the EU case, said, “Publishers, including local and national news media who play a vital role in our society, have long been harmed by Google’s anticompetitive conduct. It is time that Google owns up to its responsibilities and pays back the damages it has caused to this important industry. That is why today we are announcing these actions across two jurisdictions to obtain compensation for EU and UK publishers.”
Humphries Kerstetter, a law firm in the UK, is planning to bring a case to the competition appeal tribunal over the next month, although the process could take years to reach a conclusion.
The UK competition watchdog is also probing Google’s power in the digital advertising technology market.
Toby Starr, a partner at Humphries Kerstetter, said the claim, which aims to recover advertising revenue lost due to Google’s allegedly anti-competitive behaviour over a period of years, would not just be aimed at benefiting news sites.
“This important claim will represent a class of victims of Google’s anti-competitive conduct in ad tech who have collectively lost an estimated 7 billion pound. This includes news websites up and down the country with large daily readerships as well as the thousands of small business owners who depend on advertising revenue – be it from their fishing website, food blog, football fanzine or other online content they have spent time creating and publishing.”
Meanwhile, Google has completed the $5.4 billion acquisition of cyber-security firm Mandiant, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian announced on Tuesday.
Mandiant will join Google Cloud to help organisations improve their threat, incident and exposure management.