Yelp filed an antitrust lawsuit accusing Google of using an illegal monopoly to promote its own reviews at the expense of competitors, just weeks after a federal court ruled the tech giant a “monopoly.”
The lawsuit alleges that Google is using its dominant position in general search to “divert traffic away from competitors and to Google's own inferior local search product,” according to the complaint filed Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco.
Yelp, a longtime Google rival that aggregates customer reviews for restaurants, dentists and countless other businesses, argues that the tactic is “part of a deliberate effort to favor its products across all aspects of search.”
“Google's tactics prevent businesses from reaching customers without paying Google, depriving competitors of traffic and revenue that enables them to scale and impose competitive constraints on Google's behavior,” Yelp's complaint states.
The case represents yet another legal headache for Google, which could be quashed after U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled earlier this month that Google violated antitrust laws by paying billions of dollars to have its search engine enabled by default on most smartphones.
Google said it would appeal the ruling.
Meanwhile, a separate Justice Department antitrust lawsuit targeting Google's dominance in digital advertising begins on Sept. 9. Federal lawyers are seeking an aggressive breakup of Google's ad tech business as part of that case.
A Google spokesperson said Yelp's allegations in the lawsuit are “not new.”
“Similar claims were dismissed several years ago by the FTC and more recently by the judge in a Department of Justice case,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “We will appeal the other aspects of the ruling that Yelp mentions. Google will vigorously defend against Yelp's baseless claims.”
The lawsuit also accuses Google of “scraping” Yelp customer reviews and displaying them in its local search results without giving proper credit or compensation.
Additionally, Yelp claims that Google's local search results are riddled with errors and are of lower quality than its own search results.
“Google took Yelp's data and used it for its competing services, luring users away from Yelp and making a profit,” the lawsuit states.
Yelp said it is seeking monetary damages from Google as well as an injunction barring the company from future misconduct.
“Google should not be both the monopoly provider of general search results and the primary controller of its own local search content,” Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said in a blog post.
“It's like being both a judge and a competitor in the same Olympic event.
