Google and its parent company Alphabet have been sued by the publisher of USA Today over allegations that the tech giant abused its dominant position in the advertising technology market.
Gannett Co., which owns over 500 digital news and media brands, said in a complaint filed Tuesday that Google’s monopolistic control of how publishers sell their ad slots has hurt the company’s bottom line and is bad for consumers of news.
“It forces publishers to sell growing shares of that ad space to Google at depressed prices,” the complaint reads. “The result is dramatically less revenue for publishers and Google’s ad-tech rivals, while Google enjoys exorbitant monopoly profits.”…