OAN Staff Avril Elfi
Wednesday, August 28, 2024 4:54 PM
Yelp has formally filed a lawsuit against Google, alleging that the company is using its monopoly power to dominate the local search and advertising market.
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Yelp filed the lawsuit Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
“Our lawsuit alleges that Google, the largest information gatekeeper in existence, is using its enormous influence to stifle competition and lock consumers into its cage,” Yelp said.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, California, alleges that when customers search for local search results on Google, the search engine manipulates the results to promote its own local search services.
Yelp says this gives Google an unfair advantage over its competitors.
This means that when a user searches for a restaurant near them, Google will use its monopoly power to provide the user with all the information they need, including opening hours, directions, and reviews, saving them the trouble of having to click one of the external links, such as Yelp or another competing search engine.
“In other words, Google is abusing its monopoly power in general search to keep users within its proprietary ecosystem and prevent them from switching to rival sites,” the statement said.
Yelp claims that Google took this action because Yelp's reviews are of “higher quality” than reviews on Google and other services.
According to an FTC report cited by Yelp, 32% of Google reviews are text-free, while reviews on Yelp's own platform must always include text.
Yelp representatives also argue that Google's monopoly makes local ads so dependent on the company, allowing it to charge higher prices.
Google said in an earlier statement that it would appeal the ruling, saying Judge Amit Mehta's assessment established Google as the best search engine on the Internet, something the company had argued in court as a reason why customers prefer Google over other competitors.
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