The Riverine Grazier takes the lead in national class action against Google’s AdSense platform

A statement by  Tertia Butcher and Krista Schade

In coming days you may see your newspaper in the wider news.

A nation-wide class action against Google’s digital advertising services has been launched, and the Riverine Grazier is the lead applicant in the action.

We expect the suit will take several years to be finalised and in the meantime, little will change in the pages of your newspaper, but because you all are the most important stakeholder in The Grazier, we wanted you to hear from us first.

The class action was filed yesterday against Google, claiming anti-competitive behaviour against publishers across Australia. This action mirrors lawsuits being brought in Canada, the US and UK.

The Grazier is just one of many thousands of publishers in Australia and worldwide simply trying to earn fair income online to support the important job of news publishing, who find themselves stifled by Google’s conduct.  That’s why we have stepped forward to lead this action.

In 2021 we launched our first ever Grazier website and have invested time, effort and money in creating a platform where your stories are always available, including weekly free-to-read articles. In 2023 we signed up to host ads on our site using Google’s platform AdSense.

Our reasoning was simple; if we could earn some online income, we could employ more people to cover more local events and issues. Digital income would mean we could continue to delay raising the cover charge of The Grazier or increasing print ad prices.

We hoped that by selling ad space using Google, we could continue to offer reduced pricing to community groups and special deals to our local businesses, while keeping everyone employed and the company viable.

This meant investing significant time to retrain our staff and absorbing the set up and maintenance expenses to get the website up and running.

Our online stories are read across the globe, and our website is accessed by readers every single day, yet the remuneration to us from using Google’s services is a pittance.  We think it is unfairly low. 

These practices have affected publishers of all sizes, all over the world. In a US lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice, a witness from NewsCorp, who publishes titles such as The Wall Street Journal, The Australian and The Daily Telegraph, said it felt it was being “held hostage” by Google.

If NewsCorp feels powerless, you can only imagine how The Grazier feels.  We cannot negotiate with a global power such as Google.

Ultimately that is why we have come to the decision to become the lead applicant in the Australian Class Action. No matter how large or how small a publisher is, we deserve a fair deal when it comes to Google profiting from our news. The news and content that we strive to bring to you every week.

This is why your paper, The Riverine Grazier, agreed to lead the way.

We are small, but mighty, and we think everyone deserves a fair go.