Less than a month after Google lost a landmark case where a federal judge ruled Google is an illegal monopolist, the crowd-sourced review company Yelp is bringing their own antitrust lawsuit against the tech giant.
It's clear that the recent court loss has emboldened the longtime Google critic, as Yelp's claim states that the search company "abuses its illegal monopoly in general search to engage in anticompetitive conduct, including self-preferencing its own inferior local product, to dominate the local search and local search advertising markets," according to Yelp General Counsel Aaron Schur.
He goes on, "By willfully engaging in exclusionary, anticompetitive conduct, Google has driven traffic and revenue away from competitors, made it harder for them to scale, and increased their costs, while degrading consumer choice, to grow its own market power."
In their claim, Yelp is demanding the courts order Google to halt their alleged anticompetitive behavior and to pay damages. The lawsuit was filed in San Francisco today (August 28) in the same Northern District of California of California where a jury previously found Google to be an illegal monopoly via its app store late last year. That antitrust suit was filed by Epic Games in that company's ongoing battles against locked app stores from companies like Apple and Google.
Almost immediately after Google lost the federal suit, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman told The New York Times that the decision "is a watershed moment. This is the time to have the conversation, this is the time to correct past wrongs."
You can read Yelp's full complaint here.
Google provided a previous FTC investigation that concluded that "the evidence presented at this time does not support the allegation that Google’s display of its own vertical content at or near the top of its search results page was a product design change undertaken without a legitimate business justification."
Of course, that investigation concluded in 2013. Ten years is a long time for Google Search to change and shift into a potential problem or deficiency.
Not to be outdone, Yelp's own internal search results shove miles of sponsored results before providing useful answers.
In the case of Epic vs Google, it opens up the door for non-Google app stores on Android without restrictions, including support for storefronts with their own internal billing.
Google responds
A Google spokesperson told Tom's Guide, "Yelp’s claims are not new. Similar claims were thrown out years ago by the FTC, and recently by the judge in the DOJ’s case. On the other aspects of the decision to which Yelp refers, we are appealing. Google will vigorously defend against Yelp’s meritless claims."
They also sent a blog post from August of 2023 that outlines how Google believes how Yelp wants Search to work would "harm consumers."
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- Apple vs DOJ antitrust suit: 3 big ways your iPhone could change
- TikTok sued by DOJ over collecting data on millions of American children
