Danish job board Jobindex A/S (JOBNDX: CPH) reported revenue for the second quarter of DKK 96.6 million (€12.9 million), a decrease of 17.8% compared with the same quarter in the previous year.

Jobindex also announced it is suing tech giant Google with Danske Medier (Danish Media) set to represent Jobindex in the Maritime and Commercial Court.

Jobindex also noted that the number of job advertisements online fell approximately 10% in the second quarter of 2023 to around—24,000 ads per month after it had been stable for eight months at about 27,000.

Jobindex's advertising products reached a turnover of DKK 75 million (€10.0 million) in the second quarter of 2023 against DKK 94 million (€12.6 million) in the second quarter of 2022. At the same time, Recruitment Products turnover was DKK 7.5 million (€1.0 million) against DKK 6.6 million in the second quarter of 2022.

StepStone and the international job ads generated sales of DKK 1.2 million (€0.1 million) against DKK 2.0 million (€0.2 million) in the second quarter of 2022.

Computerworld had a turnover of DKK 9.5 million in the second quarter of 2023 against DKK 9.6 million (€1.3 million) in the second quarter of 2022. Meanwhile, IT-Jobbank had a turnover of DKK 3.7 million (€0.5 million) in the second quarter of 2023 against DKK 5.4 million (€0.7 million) in the second quarter of 2022.

Lawsuit against Google

Jobindex said that in the summer of 2022, it found that Google and the company's partners sometimes copied the Danish job board's job advertisements.

Against this background, Jobindex has, over the past year, tried to get Google to acknowledge that the tech giant has copied job advertisements for the Google for Jobs service without permission while at the same time adding that it wants compensation for breach of copyright and the Marketing Act.

Jobindex also noted a decrease in organic traffic from Google to Jobindex of approximately 20% after the introduction of Google for Jobs and thus increased its marketing costs.

The job board submitted a complaint in June 2022 to the EU Commission and asked them to investigate Alphabet over the launch of its 'Google for Jobs' service in Denmark.

According to the job board, Google has denied responsibility and denied infringing Jobindex's rights. Danske Medier is now suing Google on Jobindex's behalf with a compensation claim.

For over a year, we have tried to get Google to stop abusing its position by directing job-related searches to its own service 'Google for Jobs'", said Kaare Danielsen, director of Jobindex.

Danielsen continued, "In addition, content that has been illegally copied from Jobindex appears on Google's service, despite the fact that we have asked them to stop doing so. Our copywriters write 2,000 ad texts per year, but Google takes copyright very seriously. They have 'kindly' offered that we ourselves can object to every single copied ad we find. In other words, Google asks Jobindex to keep an eye on, whether Google passes on material to which others have the copyright."
"It is of course unacceptable. We would like to compete with Google, but of course it must be on equal terms, and not because Google for Jobs has products on the shelves that are not theirs", continued Danielsen.

Danske Medier CEO Mads Brandstrup added that the case emphasises how important it is that politicians in Denmark and the EU focus on securing the best opportunities for the media and other rights holders to protect their content against abuse by the tech giants.

"The Copyright Act is due to be revised during the coming year due to a number of necessary changes. Here is our clear appeal to the politicians that they must make sure to secure the position of Danish rights holders vis-à-vis the tech giants by separating the issue of a new agreement license in a separate bill," Brandstrup said.

The subpoena was filed yesterday, and Danske Medier said it looks forward to receiving Google's response.

In June 2023, Jobindex announced that it had sold its Norwegian job site Jobbsafari to the Finnish job search site Duunitori to concentrate its activities in Denmark.

In July 2023, Jobindex announced that it had completed delisting its shares from the Nasdaq First North Growth Market Denmark.