Having never read this, current Texas anti-trust lawsuit. [1]

Alleges quite a bit, yet the main four in the article are.

1) Google says it runs a Second Price auction, but really runs a Third Price auction, ignores the 2nd bid, and takes the difference for (shifting purposes). Telling a Publisher they made $8, when they would have made $12.80.

2) Google inflates bids of buyers "to ensure their advertisers beat out bids from competing buying platforms". Artificially making their platform look better economically. Was individual cases, yet now alleged to be a global pool of stolen Publisher money.

3) Gaining access to Publisher's ad-spend behavior with Dynamic Allocation, and then using the info to make sure rival platforms seemed less competitive by manipulating and inflating other bids. Make sure they always seem to lose by $0.01 on every bid.

4) Forcing Publishers to accept Dynamic Allocation by punishing them with the maximum allowed revenue drop for Bernake (40%) while inflating competitors. Notably Machiavellian that there was a known allowed revenue drop. "We're bein nice, we'll only cut you 25%"

On a slightly different topic, made me wonder how many investment firms artificially lower rates on funds to scrape a bit of profit off the top.

[1] https://texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/... (note, the child-support location is really weird)

All of what you write is in support of the parent post suggestion "why don’t publishers stop using doubleclick and build their own?" - the larger margin Google is taking (no matter how) between advertisers and publishers, the better deal publishers can offer when telling advertisers "come to our platform directly and get the same ad placements much cheaper"..

> Google has thoroughly rigged the space, including manipulating bid stream data to underpay publishers while overcharging the advertiser

That seems an argument for news publishers rolling their own, not against.

What you are allegeding is nasty, but it should also make it easier to build a coompeting service not harder.

This reads like a young adult discovering the world has become corrupt and wondering why it changed so much since their childhood when everyone's good.

It's not the world/Google that changed.