Daily Mail hits Google with antitrust lawsuit, cites royals coverage

The owner of the Daily Mail has filed an antitrust suit against Google in Manhattan federal court, alleging that the company manipulates search results based on how much publishers spend on advertising with the search engine giant.

“This lawsuit is to hold Google to account for their continued anti-competitive behavior including manipulation of ad auctions and news search results, bid-rigging, algorithm bias and exploiting its market power to harm their advertising rivals,” a Daily Mail spokesperson said in a statement.

Google has suppressed its coverage of royal family drama this year, which has not shown up prominently in keyword search results like “Meghan and Harry” and “Prince Philip” a spokesperson said.

A search of the keyword “Piers Morgan,” who writes a column for the paper, retrieves results from the Guardian, the Independent and other outlets before the Daily Mail, the spokesman added.

The UK-based site, which has 75 million unique monthly visitors in the US, earns 80 percent of its revenue from website ads — 99 percent of which are sold on exchanges.

Daily Mail sign
The filing alleges Google punished the UK-based site, which has 75 million unique monthly visitors in the US.
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But Google, the suit says, has rigged the system by unlawfully controlling more than 50 percent of the exchange market and 90 percent of the software used to sell the online ads, which has become a $125 billion industry.

“Google manipulates the process of real-time bidding to exclude rival exchanges, underpay for publisher inventory and ultimately reduce the quality and quantity of online news,” this suit alleges.

In response, the Daily Mail changed the way it sold ads, circumventing Google’s stranglehold on the process and steering profits away from the tech behemoth. The move increased the Daily Mail’s online ad revenue by 124 percent, but Google retaliated, the filing charges.

In June 2019, the Daily Mail disappeared overnight in Google’s search results after the company rolled out a new “Core Algorithm Update.”

 The search suppression continued for three months until Google allegedly forced the publisher to sell twice as much ad inventory on its exchange  — even though the company was paying the Daily Mail half as much for each ad slot, the suit alleges.

“Typically, these modifications are made unannounced and with no transparency,” according to the court papers.

The suit against Google, which controls 88 percent of website searches, seeks unspecified damages and court intervention to halt the company’s alleged misconduct.

Google is already facing antitrust lawsuits from the Justice Department and several attorneys general over alleged search monopolies. 

The Daily Mail paper
The Daily Mail claims Google has been suppressing its coverage of royal family drama.
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The company has insisted it has done nothing wrong.

“The Daily Mail’s claims are completely inaccurate,” said a Google spokesperson. “The use of our ad tech tools has no bearing on how a publisher’s website ranks in Google Search. More generally, we compete in a crowded and competitive ad tech space where publishers have and exercise multiple options. The Daily Mail itself authorizes dozens of ad tech companies to sell and manage their ad space, including Amazon, Verizon and more. We will defend ourselves against these meritless claims.”

source: nypost.com