On Friday, March 10th, authorities in the European Union and Britain begun probing the ‘Jedi Blue’ deal, inked in 2018, between tech giants Google and Facebook owned respectively by Alphabet and Meta. The deal allows Meta to take part in Google’s ‘Open Bidding System’, under which online publishers who are part of Google’s advertisement ecosystem can allow multiple ad exchanges and networks simultaneously.
Therefore, Meta’s ‘Meta Audience Network’ can participating in Google’s ‘Open Bidding’, even though it is supposed to be a rival technology. Meta uses the header bidding method in its advertising model. The EU’s anti-trust regulatory chief Margrethe Vestager stated that “A competing technology to Google's Open Bidding may have been targeted with the aim to weaken it and exclude it from the market for displaying ads on publisher websites and apps”. The EU says this could thwart the two firms’ rivals in the online advertising sector and consequently put other publishers on the backfoot.
Facebook and Google have faced a variety of anti-trust cases and others based on alleged harm to millions of users availing their ‘free’ services, particularly in the domain of online advertising and marketing which is their core domain.
Google And Meta Respond To Development
In their responses, both companies have said that their networks are open for all companies and facilitates competition.
Google responded to the development and stated that "This is a publicly documented, pro-competitive agreement that enables Facebook Audience Network (FAN) to participate in our Open Bidding program, along with dozens of other companies”.
Meta in its statement has highlighted that the agreement is “non-exclusive”: “Meta's non-exclusive bidding agreement with Google and the similar agreements we have with other bidding platforms, have helped to increase competition for ad placements”.
British authorities are also investigating the deal in cooperation with the EU. In March 2021, Texas led an anti-trust case against Google in the United States and was subsequently joined by 15 other states. It said in the lawsuit that the deal with Facebook was an attempt to counter the header bidding technology and shutting out online publishers from getting more revenue from the same on their websites.
Google has paid up to $8.8 billion in anti-trust fines, and faces complaints that could lead to as much as 10% of their total turnover being fined.
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