Newly unredacted court filings show that Google may have leveraged its end-to-end control over the auction-driven display advertising market to unfairly funnel revenues away from publishers and competing advertising exchanges, and back to itself, to the tune of $250 million in annual revenue dating back to 2013.

The crux of this alleged manipulation involves Google publicly stating that its auction system used a second-price model, when in fact it may have actually been using a third-price model — at least when it suited Google. //

Many in the publishing and advertising industries have suspected foul play on the part of Google for years, and those suspicions increasingly appear to have been valid.