Yelp, the popular online review platform, has filed a lawsuit against Google alleging that the tech giant had engaged in anticompetitive practices affecting its business.
The CEO of Yelp, Jeremy Stoppelman, said that Google with its monopoly in search engines has leveraged it unlawfully to dominate both the local search and its advertising markets.
Stoppelman reportedly said, “With our action, we aim to safeguard competition, protect consumer choice, recover damages, and prevent Google from engaging in anticompetitive practices so that innovation may flourish."
The online review platform alleged that Google manipulates its results to promote its own local search offerings over its rivals, by exempting itself from the qualitative ranking system it uses for other sites.
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Yelp stated that Google engages them in this activity despite to overcome its comparatively poor quality properties.
Yelp said that competitors couldn't achieve scale and advertisers got harmed due to Google's self-referencing.
It is also alleged that Google suppresses competition in the local search advertising market, ensuring that more local advertisers turn to them.
A Google spokesperson in a statement given to The Verge, said that Yelp's claims were not new and that similar such claims were thrown out years ago by the FTC and recently by the judge in the DOJ's case.
The spokesperson refuted Yelp's meritless claims and said that the tech giant will appeal its claims and vigorously defend them.
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The development come after a US federal judge's verdict that Google maintained a monopoly in the general market for a year.
Yelp's anticompetitive concerns add to the list of allegations filed against Google.
In 2017, Google was fined $2.6 billion by the European Commission reportedly for illegally favouring its shopping recommendations over those of competitors. Investigations were launched into Google's "self-preferencing" in search results under the Digital Markets Act.
In 2021, Turkey's competition authority accused Google of unlawfully prioritising its local search results.
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