Judge Says Google Must Face Advertisers' Antitrust Claims

 Alphabet's Google must face advertisers' proposed class action lawsuit claiming that it monopolizes the ad exchange market, a U.S. judge ruled on Friday.

However, Reuters reports,  U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel dismissed some other antitrust claims, including those focused on ad-buying tools used by large advertisers.

Castel was reviewing a number of cases against Google, and his decision struck down many claims but allowed at least one key set to proceed.

The advertisers, he wrote, "have not plausibly alleged antitrust standing in the markets for ad-buying tools used by large advertisers, but they plausibly allege antitrust standing as to injuries they purportedly suffered from anti-competitive practices in the ad-exchange market and the market for small advertisers' buying tools."

Castel also said Gannett the largest U.S. newspaper chain and publisher of USA Today, could try in a separate case to prove that Google fraudulently concealed anticompetitive effects of some technology. Gannett alleged that it sold some of its ad space directly to advertisers, but Google still made the inventory available for auction on its ad exchange in order to accrue transaction fees for its own benefit.

The U.S. Justice Department sued Google in January 2023, accusing it of abusing its dominance in digital advertising. The government asked for the divestiture of the Google Ad Manager suite, including Google's ad exchange, AdX

Google Ad Manager is a suite of tools including one that allows websites to offer advertising space for sale and an exchange that serves as a marketplace that automatically matches advertisers with those publishers.