Yelp sues Google over alleged search monopoly after landmark antitrust ruling

Yelp (NYSE:YELP) has sued Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google for allegedly abusing its dominant place to regulate native search and related promoting markets, thereby stifling competitors.

The net evaluation platform claimed that Google makes use of its monopoly energy basically search to divert visitors away from native search rivals and its personal search engine.

“Google’s scheme prevents companies from reaching clients with out paying Google and starves rivals of the visitors and revenues that might enable them to realize scale and pose a aggressive constraint on Google’s conduct,” Yelp (YELP) alleged.

“Google’s self-preferencing and gatekeeping has resulted in stagnant or diminished visitors to Yelp and different native search rivals regardless of objectively superior choices, as confirmed by Google’s personal high quality indicators,” in line with Yelp’s (YELP) criticism.

The lawsuit pointed to the U.S. authorities’s landmark antitrust win towards Google after a decide dominated that it maintained its search monopoly by unique distribution agreements.

Yelp’s (YELP) authorized problem means that extra corporations might contemplate suing Google over its alleged monopolistic practices. Yelp talked about different specialised platforms within the search ecosystem in its criticism, comparable to Expedia (EXPE), Glassdoor, and Zillow (Z).

“Yelp’s claims will not be new,” a Google spokesperson stated. “Related claims had been thrown out years in the past by the FTC, and just lately by the decide within the DOJ case. On the opposite facets of the choice to which Yelp refers, we’re interesting. Google will vigorously defend towards Yelp’s meritless claims.”