Google operated for years a secret program that used data from previous bids in the company’s digital advertising exchange to allegedly give its own ad-buying system an advantage over competitors, according to court documents filed in a Texas antitrust lawsuit.
The program, known as the “Bernanke Project,” was not disclosed to publishers selling ads through Google’s ad purchasing systems. The documentation shows that it generated annual revenue for the company at hundreds of millions of dollars. In its lawsuit, Texas alleges that the project gave Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., an unfair competitive advantage over rivals.
The documents filed this week were part of Google’s initial response to the Texas-led antitrust lawsuit, which was filed in December and accused the search company of running a digital ad monopoly that harmed both competitors of the advertising industry such as publishers. This week’s archive, viewed by The Wall Street Journal, was not properly worded when it was posted on the court’s public dossier. A federal judge allowed Google to shut it down again.
Some of the unwritten contents of the document were previously disclosed by MLex, an antitrust media outlet.
The paper sheds more light on the state case against Google, along with the search company’s defense.