Google gamed its ad auction system to favor its own ads, generated $213 million:
Google used a secret program called "Bernanke" that used historical bidding data to give its ad-buying system a major advantage over its rivals, an antitrust lawsuit filing claims, a program that earned the company hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.
[...] The antitrust lawsuit centers around how Google's ownership of a platform for selling online advertising, as well as its position as an ad buyer for its own properties, was a problem. By being both an owner and a client, Google was thought to be able to game the system due to having access to data that ad buyers wouldn't necessarily receive.
Google allegedly used this data from publisher ad servers to guide ad buyers to a price they would have to pay to secure a specific ad placement. This knowledge and usage was effectively insider trading to the states, as Google could feasibly pay less to publishers, as well as having a natural advantage over third-party ad-buying systems.
Project Bernanke specifically was a system that used data from historical bids made in Google Ads, massaging the bids of its clients to increase the possibility it will win an advertising auction. This put rival systems at a bigger disadvantage.
In terms of how important it was to Google, an internal presentation from 2013 shows Project Bernanke was anticipated to generate $230 million in revenue for that year alone.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by fustakrakich on Wednesday April 14 2021, @06:53AM (1 child)
Damn politicians can do that in a month [bbc.com].
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @06:56AM
*yawn*
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @07:05AM (2 children)
When a company is in a position to pull stunts like this it is too big and needs to be broken up.
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday April 14 2021, @07:55AM (1 child)
When a company gets this big without having been broken up years ago, they've probably bought the best lawmakers money can buy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @10:10AM
They didn't need to -- Microsoft already paid those lawmakers years ago. Google is just riding their coattails.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Mykl on Wednesday April 14 2021, @07:16AM (1 child)
The fact that they named the project after the head of the Federal Reserve would suggest that they were fully aware of (and enjoying!) their ability to manipulate the market through their decisions.
If this were to ever make it in front of a Judge (hah!), I would think it should attract the maximum penalty.
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday April 14 2021, @07:58AM
To be fair, Bernanke is less in-your-face a market manipulation project name than, say, Sherman.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by melyan on Wednesday April 14 2021, @07:59AM
I saved $2.
(Score: 2) by Frosty Piss on Wednesday April 14 2021, @09:42AM
It’s their ad system. Why wouldn’t they have an advantage? BFD, seriously. Just more people who hate Goggle enough to gripe about if the Google Twins lift their left or right cheek while farting.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday May 21 2021, @12:24AM
So they "manipulated" their own ad system, which I'm presuming they make most of their money from -- roughly $55E9 last quarter [nytimes.com], working out to roughly $200E9 for the year -- so they could squeeze out an additional profit of $230E*6* ? Um, sounds legit, but let us know when the malfeasance comes within a couple orders of magnitude [youtu.be] of their revenue.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday May 21 2021, @07:12AM
It certainly doesn't look good for Google, but is it illegal? It is their platform, they should be able to display their own ads for free even, the fact that they had a secret system to set lower bids for their own ads is just a roundabout way of doing it.
This could be a violation of the contract between Google and publishers. Google promised to provide an auction platform for ads, and by manipulating the bids, publishers made less money from Google ads. So Google Ads customers have a potential class action suit. But not antitrust.
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