News publishers launch €25 billion suit against Google

A LAWSUIT currently in preparation is seeking a total of €25 billion in compensation from Google on behalf of news publishers in the jurisdiction of the EU. The same legal team is also planning to bring a similar case in the UK against Google for "anti-competitive conduct".

Matt Cooke of Google News Labs talks to NUJ members at a 2016 event organised by London Freelance Branch. Should such collaborations continue?

Image © Matt Salusbury

Law firms Geradin (based in Belgium) and Stek (based in the Netherlands) are teaming up with UK law firm Humphries Kerstetter for this case against Google. THe firm is preparing a separate action to take to the UK Competition Tribunal, and estimate that the amount of money they could claim on behalf news publishers in the UK is around £7 billion.

The European lawsuit concerns lost advertising revenue to news websites with a daily readership across the UK and the EU. It will seek compensation be lost to Google due to its "dominant market position" - or near-monopoly.

There has been no mention yet of any of the actual creators of the articles that readers go to view on news websites getting any money from this lawsuit. Those creators would include us, as freelance authors and photographers.

Humphries Kerstetter did, however, tell the Press Gazette that those affected would include "thousands of small business owners who depend on advertising revenue - be it from their fishing website, food blog, football fanzine or other online content they have spent time creating and publishing."

The lawsuit follows a ruling in 2021 by the French competition authority that Google had abused its dominant position. In the adtech sector. Associated Newspapers, the group that owns Mail Online, also brought an anti-trust legal action against Google in the US last year, claiming that Google operates an effective monopoly of the digital infrastructure that publishers and advertisers need to buy and sell online advertising and to be able to compare prices.

In a separate ruling, the General Court of the EU recently agreed with the European Commission's earlier decision to impose a €4.5 billion fine on Google for "unlawful restrictions" of manufacturers of Android phones in an attempt to consolidate the dominant position of its search engine.

A motion passed by LFB at its September meeting calls on the Branch to start a debate within the NUJ on the Union's relationship with Google, including a forthcoming training in collaboration with the Google as well as the current NUJ-Google StorySmart partnership. This is likely to include a debate at the next NUJ Delegate Meeting (DM, its conference held every two years), the next one being in April 2023.