A West Virginia news publisher has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google and Facebook, which together receive half of all digital advertising dollars in the U.S. and rightly so on charges against federal and state authorities.
The company, HD Media, owns several newspapers in the state, including the Herald-Dispatch in Huntington and the Charleston Gazette-Mail.
HD Media claims Google has monopolized the online advertising market in such a way that “it threatens the extinction of local newspapers across the country.” The case also alleges that Google and Facebook had a conspiracy to promote their domination by secret agreement, citing a lawsuit filed in December by ten Republican attorneys general.
The company does not specify the influence of the behavior of Facebook and Google on its business, except that it has impaired its ability to ‘earn effectively from the content’ because Google is able to generate an uncompetitive share of advertising revenue. from the news publisher. A lawyer for the company declined to comment on the record.
This is the first lawsuit against antitrust against a technology platform aimed at news publishing, said David Chavern, head of the news trading group News Media Alliance. He said the group was not involved in the case.
HD Media filed a lawsuit in federal court in West Virginia, asking for a jury trial. It is asking for unspecified damages and that the court should restrain Google and Facebook from the uncompetitive behavior it claims.
The newspaper industry has had a long decline, with strong job losses and publications becoming thinner and even disappearing. Online advertising revenue could not compensate for the loss of print ads.
Federal and state antitrust authorities have sued both Google and Facebook in recent months. The Department of Justice alleges that Google abuses its dominance in online searches and advertising.
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Google referred a reporter to a blog post published in mid-January by the director of economic policy, Adam Cohen, who is defending Google’s cases against charges of antitrust filed by the Texas Attorney General in December.