Business search engine Yelp has decided to file an antitrust lawsuit against giant Google, marking a new stage in a dispute that has been going on for years between the two companies. According to Yelp’s accusations, Google has consolidated and maintained its monopoly in local search services by favoring its own vertical search engine, to the detriment of competitors. Yelp claims that this practice has damaged competition, reducing the overall quality of local search services. In particular, the company denounces Google’s behavior in directing users to its own local search service through the results of its general search page, which Yelp claims is a case of illegal “tying”, or the pairing of distinct products to prevent rivals from growing in the market.
Yelp is asking the court to intervene to stop what it says is anticompetitive behavior and seek damages. The lawsuit was filed in the Northern District Court of California, the same district where a separate jury recently found Google guilty of maintaining an illegal monopoly through its app store in its dispute with Epic Games. Yelp’s decision to take its own legal action against Google was encouraged by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) recent victory in its antitrust case against Google for exclusionary practices in search distribution. In an interview with New York TimesYelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said that after the ruling, “The antitrust winds have changed dramatically.”
While U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled in favor of the government in its case against Google, he limited some of the allegations during the trial. In particular, Mehta rejected claims from a group of state attorneys general who argued that Google acted unfairly by designing its search results pages to reduce the visibility of specialized search engines like Yelp and TripAdvisor. For its part, Google responded forcefully to Yelp’s new allegations. “Yelp’s claims are not new,” Peter Schottenfels, a Google spokesman, said in a statement. “Similar allegations were dismissed years ago by the FTC and more recently by the judge in the DOJ case. As for the other issues Yelp alleges, we are appealing. Google will vigorously defend itself against the baseless allegations.” Yelp has a history of fighting Google for antitrust, having testified before the Senate in 2020 and filed a complaint with the European Union over Google’s alleged favoritism toward its services.
The real losers from Google’s allegedly anti-competitive behavior, Yelp argues, are consumers. “By preventing users from leaving Google, other vertical search services are hindered from reaching customers, growing, and creating useful content,” Stoppelman wrote in a blog post. This reduction in competition, Yelp argues, means Google has less incentive to invest in quality content, potentially resulting in a poor end-user experience and less relevant but more profitable results. Advertisers would also suffer, Yelp argues, as the suppression of local search competition drives more local advertisers to Google. “As a result, Google can charge advertisers higher fees with little consequence,” Stoppelman added. “Not surprisingly, Google has grown its search ad revenue year over year by 20 percent or more for much of the past decade while simultaneously growing its market share.”
