Yelp files antitrust lawsuit against Google

Yelp sued Google on Wednesday, accusing the tech giant of violating antitrust law by abusing its monopoly over search to give itself an advantage in local search services and advertising. 

It argues that Google has diverted traffic away from competitors, like Yelp, and toward its own “inferior” local search product. 

“This is a case about Google, the largest information gatekeeper in existence, abandoning its stated mission to deliver the best information available to its consumers and instead forcing its own low-quality local search content on them,” the filing reads. 

Yelp alleges that Google’s practices have resulted in “stagnant or diminished traffic” to it and other rivals despite “objectively superior offerings,” reducing their advertising revenue and raising costs.

“For years, Google has leveraged its monopoly in general search to pad its own bottom line at the expense of what’s best for consumers, innovation, and fair competition,” said Aaron Schur, Yelp’s general counsel, in a statement. 

“By willfully engaging in exclusionary, anticompetitive conduct, Google has driven traffic and revenue away from competitors, made it harder for them to scale, and increased their costs, while degrading consumer choice, to grow its own market power,” he continued. 

Yelp’s lawsuit comes just weeks after a federal judge ruled that Google illegally maintained a monopoly over online search and text advertising.  

The landmark antitrust decision found that the tech giant’s exclusive agreements with partners like Apple to cement Google as the default search engine on their devices prevented rivals from accessing the scale they needed to meaningfully compete. 

“Judge Amit Mehta’s recent ruling in the government’s antitrust case against Google, finding Google illegally maintained its monopoly in general search, is a watershed moment in antitrust law, and provides a strong foundation for Yelp’s case against Google,” Schur added.

A Google spokesperson said in a statement that the legal claims brought by Yelp are “not new.”

“Similar claims were thrown out years ago by the [Federal Trade Commission], and recently by the judge in the [Department of Justice’s] case,” the spokesperson said. “On the other aspects of the decision to which Yelp refers, we are appealing. Google will vigorously defend against Yelp’s meritless claims.”