Teachout goes after Google, FB

The stranglehold over local news content maintained by two internet giants must be stopped, says one candidate for state attorney general.

Candidate Zephyr Teachout announced a “trustbusting” plan Wednesday to counter what she called the unfettered ability of Google and Facebook to capitalize on local news posted online.

The left-leaning law professor unveiled the plan just days after Daily News owner Tronc cut roughly half of the newsroom staff to lower costs in a climate of spiraling advertising revenue.

“We’ve dealt with a crisis of concentration before in this country, and we need to do it again,” Teachout said standing in front of The News’ lower Manhattan office.

If elected, she vowed to join forces with other attorneys general across the country to launch a major antitrust investigation into Facebook and Google, “who have a digital ad duopoly.”

Those sites are “capturing so much of the work being done by journalists,” she added. “Last year, Google made $95 billion from selling digital advertising, (and) Facebook made about $40 billion.”

All told, the tech giants gobbled up approximately 60% of all digital ad revenue.

“There’s essentially what folks in publishing call the ad tech tax,” she said. “People are making money off of local news — but it isn’t the journalists, and it isn’t the publishers. It’s Facebook and Google.”

She promised to probe those sites to find whether they are possibly abusing their powers.

“There’s not a single silver bullet to fix the decimation of local news,” she said. “But for almost 40 years, we’ve had a radical under-enforcement of antitrust laws.”

The New York attorney general should stop “unlawful” mergers, Teachout said, “given that they are already in such a dominant position.”

“Google bought a company a week in 2011,” she said.