A new chapter in Google’s antitrust troubles opened yesterday with Yelp filing a lawsuit alleging that Google’s monopoly in search has allowed it to illegally dominate the local search and local search advertising markets.
Yelp will argue that Google harms consumers by promoting its own inferior local search product over other local search providers, stifling competition and increasing costs for its rivals. Yelp is claiming damages in an amount to be calculated, the damages to be treble under the 1914 Clayton Act.
The full complaint is here.
Why we care. Having just been hit over the head with a major loss in the DoJ’s antitrust case alleging an illegal monopoly in search and text advertising, it seems Google may now be the target of further claims from individual corporations that can show harm.
We’ll leave it to the lawyers to adjudicate whether the DoJ’s success will put wind in the sails of claims like Yelp’s. But Google would surely rather be doing things other than defend itself in court.