Google faces €25bn suits in Europe over ad-tech practices

Google is going to face two suits for damages claims for almost €25 billion in British and Dutch courts with regard to its digital advertising practices.

Law firm Geradin Partners has announced that it will bring parallel damages actions in the UK and the Netherlands (covering the EEA) on behalf of publishers who have “suffered harm from Google’s anti-competitive conduct in relation to ad-tech.” Funding for both actions has been secured from Harbour, a top-tier litigation funder, said a press release by the legal firm.

During a time when many media organisations struggled to pay journalists’ wages, Google deprived them of billions of revenues through anti-competitive conduct. For many publishers it would be too expensive to sue a gigantic company like Google. Without this action, these damages would go unaddressed, said the release. 

Damien Geradin (Geradin Partners) said: “Publishers, including local and national news media who play a vital role in our society, have long been harmed by Google’s anticompetitive conduct. It is time that Google owns up to its responsibilities and pays back the damages it has caused to this important industry. That is why today we are announcing these actions across two jurisdictions to obtain compensation for EU and UK publishers.”

In the Netherlands, Geradin Partners has teamed up with Dutch law firm Stek to bring a collective claim representing EU publishers. The legal analysis is supported by independent economics consultancy Charles River Associates.

In the United Kingdom, Geradin Partners has teamed up with litigation law firm Humphries Kerstetter to bring an opt-out collective damages claim in the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal. The UK claim will focus on recovering compensation for lost revenue from the sale of advertising space on the websites of all class members. Counsel for the case will be Ronit Kreisberger QC and Julian Gregory from Monckton Chambers and David Wingfield and Niamh Cleary from Fountain Court Chambers. The legal analysis is again supported by CRA for the economic analysis.

Google, meanwhile, attacked these lawsuits, claiming that it works constructively with publishers all over Europe.

Last year, the French Competition Authority found Google had abused its dominant position by engaging in various forms of self-preferencing in breach of Article 102 TFEU. Specifically, Google was accused of using its publisher ad servers by favouring its own ad exchange and had used its ad exchange to favour its publisher ad server. Both practices had been in place since 2014. Google’s anticompetitive conduct was found to have caused harm to publishers. Google did not contest the findings. Geradin Partners and CRA acted for complainants in the French Competition Authority case. 

In 2021, the French Competition Authority imposed a fine of €220m on Google in relation to its conduct in ad tech. Ad tech is the short name for the technologies powering the online adverts billions of consumers see in their everyday lives when surfing the web and using their smartphones. Selling digital advertising is a key source of revenue for publishers of online content including news media. As consumers spend an increasing amount of their time online to communicate, shop, and entertain themselves, digital advertising has experienced spectacular growth, exceeding $490 billion in 2021.