It’s time that we told you: The Progressive is suing Google.
Yes, that Google, one of the largest and most powerful enterprises on Earth.
Last December, we joined with The Nation and a company called Genius Media Group in taking Google to court over its monopolistic ad sales practices, which work to the detriment of small publishers like us.
Reuters wrote an article about it, and Katrina vanden Heuvel penned an excellent column in The Nation. But the class-action lawsuit, still in its early stages, has not yet gotten the attention it deserves.
Standing up for fairness has always been integral to The Progressive’s mission. It is reflected in the articles we publish and the causes we champion.
The lawsuit complaint filed by lawyers from multiple states alleges that Google has engaged in “unlawful anti-competitive conduct” by “erecting a toll bridge between publishers and advertisers and charging an unlawfully high price for passage.” In recent years, it says, Google’s U.S. ad revenues have “exploded, approaching nearly $135 billion in 2019, while publisher revenues have plummeted.” It reckons that “total damages from Google’s unlawful conduct suffered by class members during the class period amount, at the very least, to hundreds of millions of dollars.”
We are not suing Google to get a boatload of cash, although we sure could use it; we’re suing because what Google is doing is wrong. As the complaint says, “Left unrestrained, Google will monopolize these and the other markets related to the display advertising marketplace, allowing Google’s toll on publishers (and advertisers) to continue unabated. Once Google is able to achieve that control, there will be no end to Google’s ability to charge publishers monopoly prices, and Google will have obtained power once thought unimaginable—the power to decide which publishers live and which die.”
Standing up for fairness has always been integral to The Progressive’s mission. It is reflected in the articles we publish and the causes we champion. It is why we have opposed ignorant extremists like Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy and his modern-day counterpart, Ron Johnson. It’s why, in 1979, we took on the full might and authority of the U.S. government when it tried to prevent the magazine from publishing an article on H-bomb design.
That case has gotten fresh attention in a new book, Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, by Alex Wellerstein. The historian relates that officials with the U.S. Department of Energy, in requesting that the magazine cease plans to publish, “anticipated that The Progressive would acquiesce, as many a publication had in the past.”
Instead, this magazine fought the government for six months until it dropped its case and the article was published, exposing the myths underlying nuclear secrecy. “In hindsight,” Wellerstein deadpans, “it is clear the DOE misjudged The Progressive.”
Day by day, we honor the spirit of Fighting Bob La Follette. Not long ago, we had the subject of a story threaten to sue us for saying he has taken part in a deliberate deception, which he had. We reviewed his retraction demand and issued this reply: “We stand by our story.” When we get something wrong, we’ll admit it. When some bully tries to push us around, we’ll push back.
Intern Nora-Kathleen Berryhill works on copy in our cozy new office.
Many of the stories in this issue are focused on the critical subject of education, as schools head into uncharted waters in what is sadly unlikely to be the end of the pandemic. The package is introduced by Jeff Bryant, the lead fellow of The Progressive’s Public Schools Advocate project, who helped, along with Associate Editor Emilio Leanza, pull it together.
Please visit our website, Progressive.org, to see our fresh new look, which preserves what was good about our old look but makes it cleaner, greener (literally), and more functional. Thanks to Art Director Kerstin Vogdes Diehn for heading up this redesign.
The Progressive also has a new office, near where it was based for more than three decades before we moved across the street from the Wisconsin state capitol in 2015. Our new digs, at 931 East Main Street, is a former Greyhound bus station that now houses a vast array of funky businesses and dedicated nonprofit groups, like us. It’s quite a bit less space, but more affordable, and with several members of our small staff working from home we can easily make the adjustment, just as we meet the other challenges before us.
Because no matter how tough it is to withstand the market forces that we face, due in part to bad actors like Google, we will face them, and survive. To believe otherwise would be to misjudge The Progressive, a publication that’s always committed to looking forward.
Bill Lueders
Editor