Never before has a single entity had so much control over so much information as Google does today. The threat it poses to democracy is unprecedented, and the methods it has used to attain that power are at best unfair and perhaps illegal. The people need to take power back from Big Tech, and the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act is the best hope to start doing so.
Google was just one-tenth of its current size when it bought an online advertising company called DoubleClick in 2007. At the time, DoubleClick acted as a middleman between advertisers who wanted to buy online space, and publishers, such as the Washington Examiner, who wanted to sell it. Google had always made money selling advertisements on its own search engine, but it wanted to leverage its market power in search, and video market power via YouTube, to become the dominant middleman in all of online advertising.
It worked. By controlling information coming into and going out of the online advertising market, and by forcing advertisers to buy ads across Google’s online properties, such as YouTube, it obtained a monopoly in online advertising. When you see an advertisement on The New York Times or the Washington Examiner, no matter who the advertiser is, that advertisement was probably bought and sold through Google’s marketplace, and it took a very hefty cut.
Industry studies say Google takes 30-50% of all revenue spent on advertising. That means if Joe’s Meats buys a $1,000 ad on the Peoria Journal Star’s website, Google gets up to $500. No wonder small papers are dying. While traffic to news sites is up 39% since 2014, revenue produced by news publications is down 58%. Like a parasite, Google has grown fat by sucking revenue from publishers everywhere.
More than 35 states are suing Google in federal court alleging that it broke state antitrust laws by abusing its market power in search and video to create an online advertising monopoly. The Department of Justice is considering a similar suit alleging Google broke federal antitrust law.
These suits might find that Google broke the law but they won’t make publishers whole and no court settlement can match the power of negotiations between equal market participants. Publishers need to be allowed to work to take on Google directly. That is what the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act does.
The legislation would create a safe harbor for publishers, including the Washington Examiner, to band together and negotiate for a fair deal with Google. No money would come from taxpayers or the government. The only thing that would happen is that publishers would have a shot, working together, to make Google give back some of the revenue stream it has diverted from them over the years. Federal courts have carved out similar safe harbors in antitrust law for music producers and trade associations.
There is a provision in the bill to protect small, local, and startup publishers. Larger publishers would be required to set aside some of their payments from Google that would then go to smaller and new publishers. The environment for startup media companies would be vastly improved.
In 2020, Google and its employees gave 94% of their political donations to Democratic candidates and just 6% to Republicans. It is heavily biased against conservatives and studies have shown it routinely uses its control over the flow of information to help Democrats. Republicans such as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Judiciary Committee ranking member Jim Jordan oppose the bill because it would shield publishers from antitrust law in their joint negotiation with Google. But sometimes exceptions are necessary, and this is one of them. McCarthy, Jordan, and others should get behind an effort that would allow news organizations of all ideological hues to make a living out of their work.
This publication, like many others, would benefit if the legislation became law. We do not wish to hide or sidestep that fact. But removing Google’s stranglehold over the information market is also a positive good for the country.
This Journalism Competition and Preservation Act is not a silver bullet that can solve every problem created by Big Tech, but it is a multi-billion dollar start.
