Google faces a US$3.2 billion damages bill from Mail, USA Today and 5,000 publishers

A New York judge has thrown out Google's defences and cleared the Daily Mail, USA Today and a class of roughly 5,000 US publishers to pursue US$3.2 billion in antitrust damages, built directly on the findings of the ad tech trial before Judge Leonie Brinkema. Judge P. Kevin Castel rejected Google's argument that the Mail's "salacious, explicit, and violent" content explained its ad losses, ruling the claim had "no discernable connection to the antitrust damages" sought. The Mail can pursue US$600 million, USA Today's 200 mastheads US$900 million, and the wider publisher class another US$1.72 billion. Castel also let the Mail chase US$383 million in non-US losses, echoing Brinkema's finding that Google's ad tech "built global infrastructure" and that any remedy "must reach worldwide". The damages are itemised by Chicago economist Ali Hortacsu, who priced US$234 million for auctions where rival bidders were kept out and put Google's overcharge at US$81 million for the Mail and US$106 million for USA Today, based on a 20% exchange fee against a 5% comparable rate. Sutton flags the internal emails still to come, including Project Bernanke, quoting one Googler: "IANAL, but the buyers are currently implementing a 'bidding ring' which the FTC has declared illegal in many instances."

The crux

Google's liability is now moving from an adjudicated finding to a quantified, per-publisher damages claim, and the evidence base of the antitrust trial is becoming a reusable playbook for publisher claims around the world.

Sell-side read

the 20%-versus-5% exchange fee arithmetic is the number publishers can drop into their own negotiations; every publisher overcharged on AdX now has a precedent and a methodology for quantifying the delta.

Watch

whether the class certification for the 5,000-publisher claim survives the next motion, and whether non-US publishers begin filing mirror claims.