Google’s ‘Project Bernanke’ gave titan unfair ad-buying edge, lawsuit claims

Google has utilized a secret program to track bids on its ad-buying platform — and has been accused of using the information to gain an unfair market advantage that raked in hundreds of millions of dollars annually, according to a report.

The initiative — dubbed “Project Bernanke” in an apparent reference to former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke — was detailed in court filings in an ongoing Texas-led antitrust suit, which were initially uploaded to an online docket with incomplete redactions, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. In the documents, since re-filed under seal, Google reportedly acknowledged the existence of Project Bernanke and wrote that details of its “operations are not disclosed to [ad] publishers,” but denied that it gave the search titan an unfair advantage.