Yelp, a long-time rival of Google, has filed an antitrust lawsuit against the search giant, accusing it of engaging in anticompetitive practices in the local search market.
The Verge reports that Yelp, one of Google’s most vocal competitors, has filed an antitrust lawsuit against the search engine giant. The move comes less than a month after a federal judge ruled that Google had violated antitrust laws and maintained an illegal monopoly. Yelp’s lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of California, alleges that Google has created or preserved its monopoly in local search services by favoring its own inferior vertical over those of competitors, thereby harming competition and reducing the quality of local search services.
According to Yelp, Google’s practice of directing users toward its own local search vertical from its general search engine results page constitutes an illegal tying of separate products, preventing rivals from reaching scale. The company is seeking a court order to stop Google’s allegedly anticompetitive conduct and to pay damages. Yelp has demanded a jury trial, and the case will be heard in the same court where a jury previously found Google guilty of maintaining an illegal monopoly through its app store in a separate case against Epic Games.
