The Daily Mail Sues Google Over Search Results

The Daily Mail’s owner filed an antitrust suit against Alphabet Inc.’s Google on Tuesday, alleging the tech giant manipulates search results and advertising auctions in ways that harm online publishers.

The Wall Street Journal reports the suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, alleges that Google punishes publishers in search rankings if they don’t sell enough advertising space through Google’s marketplace.

The Daily Mail’s concerns stem in part from its assessment that its coverage of the U.K.’s royal family in 2021 has been played down in Google’s search results, a spokesman for the publisher said.

In a statement, a Google spokeswoman denied the allegations in the suit. “The Daily Mail’s claims are completely inaccurate. The use of our ad tech tools has no bearing on how a publisher’s website ranks in Google Search. More generally, we compete in a crowded and competitive ad tech space where publishers have and exercise multiple options,” the statement said.

Publishing executives complain in private about Google’s dominance of search and advertising, but few go public with their grievances. In January, the parent company of West Virginia’s Charleston Gazette-Mail filed an antitrust suit against Google and Facebook Inc. Several other small publishers on Monday filed suits against those two tech companies, citing a deal between them code-named “Jedi Blue.”

Separately, Google is facing antitrust suits brought by the U.S. Justice Department and attorneys general in several states. The company has denied abusing its market power and has said the ad technology market is competitive.

The U.K.-based Daily Mail, known for celebrity and pop-culture news, has built one of the world’s most-read websites, with 75 million unique monthly visitors in the U.S., according to the suit, which seeks unspecified damages. The suit also asks Google to discontinue its alleged misconduct and offer transparency into its news-search algorithm.

Publishers have a complicated relationship with Google. The tech company’s search engine is a major source of web traffic for many sites, and most of the industry uses Google software to sell ad space in advertising exchanges. But Google also competes with publishers for online ad dollars and supplies tools to ad buyers. Google had a nearly 29% share of the U.S. digital ad market in 2020, according to research firm eMarketer.