Genius Media Group joins the national roster of entities suing Google for antitrust, which announced a lawsuit on Wednesday night over the search giant’s ad-sharing practices.
In the filing, Genius Media Group – which owns the lyrics and annotation sites Genius and RapGenius – claims that Google near monopoly with its display advertising marketplace “Set up a toll bridge between publishers and advertisers and costs an unlawfully high price for transit. “
“In particular, Google’s ad server – the software or code that publishers use to make critical decisions about ad content – imposes anti-competitive rules and behaviors that artificially distort the channels through which publishers sell their inventory of ad placements, ” the accusation states.
The case has been filed as a class action lawsuit and is likely to attract other companies who have issues with the way the ad server is managed – bad news for Google, given that that list is quite long. Companies with specialized search results, including Amazon, Tripadvisor and Yelp, have long claimed that Google’s algorithm has been modified to prioritize its own products in search results, meaning that competitors must either accept less traffic or spend a lot of money to stay competitive with google in the search results.
The case is just the latest of Google’s growing antitrust problems. earlier on Wednesday, a coalition of states led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced an antitrust suit against Google’s behavior in the ad technology market, alleging that the company has ‘repeatedly’ abused its monopoly power to how online advertisements are priced to manipulate auctions. “That case is unrelated to an individual case antitrust lawsuit filed against Google in October by the Justice Department and 11 Republican Attorneys General, which Google is accused of drafting exclusive contracts with the manufacturers of Android smartphones so that the devices would come pre-loaded with Google as the default browser search engine.
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And the party is reportedly just getting started: As recently reported, a second coalition of states led by Colorado Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser is apparently preparing an antitrust case against Google alleging that the company has changed its search infrastructure to the detriment of certain rivals who provide specialized search results. According to Politics, that complaint could already go live on Thursday.