The complaint filed by Texas AG Ken Paxton is connected to the multi-state antitrust lawsuit filed last December that alleges Facebook and Google agreed to assist each…
The complaint filed by Texas AG Ken Paxton is connected to the multi-state antitrust lawsuit filed last December that alleges Facebook and Google agreed to assist each other against antitrust actions. The redacted filing hid much of the specific details. However, The New York Times obtained an unredacted draft that shows the two companies had agreed to a lot more than just aiding each other against antitrust regulators. The partnership sprung up when Facebook, one of Google’s largest ad revenue sources, began testing a new ad-auctioning method called « header bidding. » It was developed to get around Google’s over-dominating ad platform. It allowed websites to get bids from multiple exchanges simultaneously, increasing competition resulting in better prices for publishers. « [Header bidding cuts out] third-party middlemen who make the rules and obfuscate the truth, » Facebook remarked as a back-handed poke at Google’s methods. According to an internal email, Google viewed header bidding as an « existential threat, » especially once Facebook threatened to get on board. So Google created « Open Bidding, » which was similar to header bidding, except Google would take a small fee for every winning bid.
