Google to face £13.6 billion lawsuit

A UK court has ruled that Google must face a £13.6bn lawsuit for allegedly having too much power in the online advertising market.

The lawsuit, filed by Ad Tech Collective Action LLP, alleges the online giant acted anti-competitively, depriving UK online publishers of their earnings.

Google's parent company, Alphabet, called the case "inconsistent" in its efforts to drop the lawsuit. However, the Competition Appeal Court in London ruled that the case could go to court.

"This decision has significant implications for the victims of Google's anti-competitive behavior in ad technology," said former Ofcom director Claudio Pollack, now a partner at Ad Tech Collective Action. "Google will now have to answer for its actions in a full legal proceeding." However, Google's legal director Oliver Bethell called the lawsuit "speculative and opportunistic." "We will oppose it decisively and based on facts," he added in a statement.

The cases refer to the advertising technology, usually abbreviated to adtech, that decides what online ads people see and how much they cost publishers.

Hosting such ads is a huge source of revenue for many websites. Ad Tech Collective Action says the digital advertising budget will reach $490 billion in 2021. It's also an extremely valuable industry for Google, as it dominates web search by a large margin.

The gist of the claim is the claim that Google is abusing this dominance and reducing the revenue of other websites. Ad Tech Collective Action claims that Google engages in "self-preference" by promoting its own products and services more prominently than those of its competitors.

He says this means publishers end up getting less money for the ads they host, and they also have to pay very high fees to Google.