Yelp Sues Google for Dominating Local Search Results

Yelp, the local recommendations company, has filed an antitrust suit against Google, claiming that the company’s dominance in search allows it to engage in unfair business practices against local-search competitors.

Yelp features reviews and information such as menus and operating hours for businesses such as restaurants and cleaning services. It filed suit against Google in a San Francisco federal court.

In a post on its website, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said, “Abandoning its stated mission to deliver the best information to users, Google has illegally abused its monopoly in general search to dominate the local search and local search advertising markets — engaging in anticompetitive conduct that has degraded the quality of search results and demoted rivals to grow its market power.”

In the post, Stoppelman said that Google’s dominance, not only in general search results but in localized search, particularly on mobile devices, allows it to direct users to its own listings in ways that hurt consumers, competitors and advertisers.

“Yelp’s claims are not new,” said Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels. “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.”

One impetus for the timing of Yelp’s lawsuit is a federal judge’s August decision in a landmark monopoly case. In the ruling, Google was found to have maintained a monopoly by engaging in practices such as paying companies to make Google the default search engine on devices such as smartphones. It’s still unclear what the outcome of that ruling will be — it’s possible the government could require Google to break up its search business. 

In the past year, Google has been embroiled in class-action suits and settlements over issues including browser privacy, browser tracking and how it handles user search data. Two years ago, the company lost an appeal over antitrust issues related to its Android mobile operating system in Europe.

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