Daily Mail set for legal clash with Google over anti-monopoly lawsuit

The publishers of DailyMail.com and MailOnline have launched an anti-trust lawsuit against Google, accusing it of anti-competitive behaviour and of orchestrating search results, so setting up a legal clash between the search giant and one of the world’s biggest news websites.

Why it matters

The suit, described by Google as “worthless”, suggests Google has too much control over the online ad market and alleges it downgraded links to Mail stories. The legal action comes as a wave of publishers in the US also launch suits against Google, as well as Facebook, claiming monopolistic practices.

The details

• MailOnline accuses Google of punishing it for trying to reduce its need to use Google’s tools for selling online ads.
• Specifically, it alleges that UK online users looking for terms such as “Meghan Markle” and “Piers Morgan” were directed by Google’s search engine to much smaller news outlets, despite the fact that MailOnline was publishing many stories a day about Morgan’s controversial comments about the Duchess of Sussex following her and Prince Harry’s TV interview with Oprah Winfrey.
• A spokesperson for Google said: “The use of our ad tech tools has no bearing on how a publisher’s website ranks in Google search.”
• Separately, publishers of 125 newspapers in 11 US states have filed, or say they are set to file, suits against Google and Facebook alleging the two tech giants have illegally monopolised the online ad market and agreed a secretive 2018 price-fixing deal dubbed “Jedi Blue”. Both companies deny any illegality.

Sourced from The Guardian, Editor & Publisher