Google is being sued for unfair advertising practises in a huge case worth $25 billion.
In two different lawsuits, Google is in a legal dispute again because of how it advertises online. In the coming weeks, these cases will be heard in British and Dutch courts. If the search engine giant loses, it could have to pay up to $25.4 billion in damages, which is almost half of the company’s annual profit for 2022.
The British lawsuit wants to get money from all website owners, including traditional publishers, whose sites have banner ads. On the other hand, the Dutch lawsuit only wants to get money from publishers who lost money because of what Google did. Harbour, a well-known company that pays for lawsuits, is paying for both of them.
Google has been in trouble with the law before because of its ads. Antitrust regulators have also gone after the company in the past. Last year, a French watchdog for fair competition fined the company €220 million.
The European Commission and its UK counterpart are also looking into Google’s advertising technology because it gives the company an unfair advantage over its competitors.
The investigation began in June of last year and looked into whether Google favours its own online display advertising technology services over those of competitors, advertisers, and online publishers.
Damien Geradin of the law firm Geradin Partners said:
Google needs to take responsibility for the damage it has done to this important industry and pay for it. Because of this, we are announcing these actions in two location today to get publishers in the EU and UK paid.
Google argued against the lawsuits by saying that it works with publishers in Europe in a positive way. A company representative said:
This lawsuit is a waste of time and money. When we get the complaint, we’ll fight it with everything we’ve got.
