‘Egregious’: Google facing two Australian class actions

“We’ve had the benefit of almost a de facto discovery of sorts, through what the DOJ has done,” he said.

“We particularly want to hear from publishers and advertisers. There’s a great degree of concern about the conduct and how it’s affected people’s revenue lines. The challenge, as always, with Google as it was with Apple, is having people who are prepared to stand up and have their case lead the charge on this.”

Class action suits typically take between two and four years to play out. McDonald suggested that the case could be worth billions of dollars given a similar ongoing lawsuit in Canada is worth as much as $8 billion.

On Friday, Canada’s competition watchdog announced a lawsuit against Google, alleging it illegally linked two advertising tools to maintain a monopoly and used this dominant position to distort ad auctions by preferring its own tools. It filed an application that, if successful, would require Google to sell two of its ad-technology tools and pay a fine of up to 3 per cent of its global revenue.

Australian publishers have long complained about meagre online advertising revenues, and many have blamed Google’s dominance of the market for their decisions to lay off staff.

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“We believe that the tech giant’s conduct … foreclosed rivals and tied businesses to its services in a manner that we are concerned is inconsistent with lawful competition,” Maurice Blackburn principal Miranda Nagy said in a statement.

“Our case will be focused on recovering compensation for publishers, who we believe were charged too much for Google’s services and received less revenue from their advertising inventory.”

An inquiry by Australia’s competition and consumer watchdog in 2021 found that Google’s conflicts of interest had “led to poor outcomes” for publishers. It found that more than 90 per cent of ad impressions traded via the ad tech supply chain passed through at least one Google service in 2020.

“Over more than a decade, Google’s vertical integration and strength in ad tech services has allowed it to engage in a range of conduct which has lessened competition over time and entrenched its dominant position,” the ACCC said at the time.

The federal government is also expected next week to unveil a policy framework designed to curb anticompetitive behaviour by the tech giants, with Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones appearing at an event at the University of Sydney titled “50 years of consumer protections: Revitalising consumer law to strengthen markets and deliver fairness in the digital age”.

Google did not respond to a request for comment.

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