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By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Alphabet’s Google was hit with a 2.1-billion-euro ($2.3 billion) lawsuit by 32 media teams together with Axel Springer and Schibsted on Wednesday, alleging that that they had suffered losses because of the firm’s practices in digital promoting.
The transfer by the group which embody publishers in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain and Sweden comes as antitrust regulators additionally crack down on Google’s advert tech enterprise.
“The media corporations concerned have incurred losses resulting from a much less aggressive market, which is a direct results of Google’s misconduct,” a press release issued by their legal professionals Geradin Companions and Stek stated.
“With out Google’s abuse of its dominant place, the media corporations would have obtained considerably larger revenues from promoting and paid decrease charges for advert tech companies. Crucially, these funds might have been reinvested into strengthening the European media panorama,” the legal professionals stated.
They cited the French competitors authority’s 220-million-euro nice in opposition to Google on its advert tech enterprise in 2021 in addition to the European Fee’s expenses final 12 months to buttress their group declare.
Google final 12 months stated it disagreed with EU antitrust expenses in opposition to its advert tech enterprise the place it’s concerned in each the buy-side in addition to the sell-side of the availability chain.
Publishers world wide have lately lamented Massive Tech’s rising dominance in promoting as their share of revenues fall. Google is essentially the most dominant digital promoting platform on the earth, based on analysts.
The group stated they filed the lawsuit in a Dutch courtroom due to the nation’s popularity as a key jurisdiction for antitrust damages claims in Europe, and to keep away from a number of claims in numerous European international locations.
Others within the group embody Austria’s Krone, Belgian teams DPG Media and Mediahuis, Denmark’s TV2 Danmark A/S, Finland’s Sanoma, Poland’s Agora, Spain’s Prensa Iberica and Switzerland’s Ringier.
($1 = 0.9247 euros)
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; enhancing by Jason Neely)
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