‘They felt Google was holding them hostage’: Australian law firms looking at class actions against tech giant

Two local law firms are investigating class actions against Google.

The potential cases – being conducted by Phi Finney McDonald and Maurice Blackburn – are looking at “alleged anti-competitive conduct in relation to digital advertising” by the tech giant and will seek “compensation for advertisers (eg if you purchased a GoogleAd) or publishers (eg if you received revenue from ads on your website) who have suffered loss as a result of Google’s alleged anti-competitive conduct”.

“We believe that the tech giant’s conduct with respect to the AdTech services it operate, and with respect to programmatic advertising auctions, foreclosed rivals and tied businesses to its services in a manner that we are concerned is inconsistent with lawful competition,” Maurice Blackburn principal lawyer, Miranda Nagy, said in a statement given to Mumbrella.

“The US cases against Google concerning Search and Adtech have revealed a trove of internal Google documents that make it very clear that Google has a global system for managing adtech with no meaningful regional differences: it is a company with more power than many nation states, operating in a way that is essentially uniform globally; it has over the years acted to ensure that programmatic auction rules operated to its benefit and we are concerned, to publishers’ detriment.