The owner of the Daily Mail filed an antitrust suit on Tuesday against Alphabet Inc.’s Google, alleging that the tech giant is manipulating search results and ad auctions in ways that harm online publishers.
The suit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, alleges that Google is punishing publishers in search results for not selling enough ad space through Google’s marketplace.
The Daily Mail’s concerns stem in part from its assessment that coverage of the British Royal Family has been watered down in Google search results in 2021, a publisher spokesman said.
In a statement, a Google spokeswoman denied the allegations in the lawsuit. The claims of the Daily Mail are completely false. Using our ad technology tools will not affect how a publisher’s website ranks in Google Search. More generally, we compete in a busy and competitive ad technology space where publishers have and exercise multiple options, ”the statement said.
Publishing executives privately complain about Google’s dominance in search and advertising, but few go out with their grievances. In January, West Virginia’s parent company Charleston Gazette-Mail filed an antitrust suit against Google and Facebook Inc. Several other small publishers filed suit against these two tech companies on Monday, citing a deal between them code-named ‘Jedi Blue’.