Google’s antitrust defeat opens the door to lawsuit from Yelp

San Francisco: When a federal judge declared Google an illegal monopoly in a landmark ruling this month, it was not immediately clear what consequences the world’s largest search engine provider would face.

But one result is coming into focus: Google’s antitrust defeat opened the door to more lawsuits.

On Wednesday, Yelp, the popular online service that lets people find and review local businesses, sued Google in federal court in San Francisco. Yelp claims that Google used its dominance as a general, or all-purpose, search engine to gain an unfair advantage in local search services. Yelp is seeking unspecified monetary damages and an order for Google to stop its anticompetitive practices in a jury trial.

A longtime critic of Google, Yelp has frequently complained about how the search giant treats other companies in its results. But it is the first time the San Francisco company has sued Google, despite years of protests to regulators around the world.

“This is a watershed moment,” said Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp’s co-founder and CEO. “This is the time to have the conversation, this is the time to correct past wrongs.”

Yelp is leaning on a ruling from Judge Amit Mehta of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that said Google had abused its power over online search. The Justice Department and states had sued Google, accusing it of illegally cementing its dominance by paying companies like Apple and Samsung billions of dollars a year to automatically steer users to Google’s search engine on their smartphones and web browsers.

Google said in a statement that “Yelp’s claims are not new.”

Peter Schottenfels, a Google spokesperson, said in a statement that similar claims were thrown out by the Federal Trade Commission about a decade ago and more recently by Mehta. “On the other aspects of the decision to which Yelp refers, we are appealing. Google will vigorously defend against Yelp’s meritless claims,” he said.

The company added that Yelp was an online middleman and it was more valuable to present direct connections to businesses. Google’s local search results direct more than 6.5 billion connections to businesses each month, it added.

The Justice Department has considered asking Mehta to break Google up, The New York Times has reported. But there will be another round of hearings to determine remedies in the case, starting in September. Google has said it will appeal the ruling.