Arlington, VA – Today, Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that Google had acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in advertising technology. This monopoly has allowed the company to force news and content publishers to use its services, and offer them lower payouts for ad space than they would otherwise receive in a competitive market.
In response to this ruling, Danielle Coffey, President and CEO of the News/Media Alliance, issued the following statement:
“The news media industry hails the court’s decision to again hold Google accountable for decades of abuse of its market power. Google’s monopolistic tactics—this time in the advertising market—have starved content creators of the revenues they deserve and need to sustain quality journalism. Today is a big day for our industry.”
The News/Media Alliance has spent years advocating on behalf of news media publishers against Google’s unlawfully anticompetitive actions. We are strongly supportive of a similar lawsuit in Texas that will follow, as well as the Gannett lawsuit currently being litigated on the same issues. Much of this was prompted in the House Report that documented Google’s abuse in the ad tech ecosystem, the scope of which is wide-reaching.
The Alliance has repeatedly highlighted the extensive harm Google’s anti-competitive actions have caused to both publishers and consumers. The Alliance has offered countless testimony on this issue, laying out the damage Google’s monopoly has caused publishers of all sizes, noting a particularly disproportionate impact on minority media.
Today’s decision, when coupled with Google’s dominance in search recently affirmed by the courts in a separate case, illustrates the stranglehold Google has on consumer data and advertising that has led to devastating revenue loss for creators of original, quality content. The Alliance weighed in on the other Google antitrust case by submitting a whitepaper, “How Google Abuses Its Position as a Market Dominant Platform to Strong-Arm News Publishers and Hurt Journalism,” to the court for review.
Fixing this problem was always the premise of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which would address the marketplace imbalance that has had a devastating impact on news media’s ability to reinvest in quality journalism. We will continue to work with our legislative champions, Senators Kennedy and Klobuchar, to find a path forward for this desperately-needed legislative solution.
