Online review platform Yelp has sued Google. Yelp has alleged that Google wants to eliminate its competitors from the advertising market and create its own monopoly.
Yelp CEO and co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman said in a blog post that Google has abused its monopoly to dominate the local search and local search advertising market.
Yelp has filed the suit at a time when a US federal judge recently said that Google has illegally maintained a monopoly in the general search market for the past one year.
Google describes its content as better
Yelp said that when a user searches for content on Google, Google manipulates its results to show its local search offering as better than its competitors.
He said that even if its own content is of comparatively poor quality, it promotes it more. It also gives exemption to its own content in the quality ranking system.
Yelp said- Google has to be stopped from doing anti-competitive work
Stoppelman said, ‘With this action, we want to protect competition and consumer choice, as well as compensate for the damages. Also want to stop Google from doing anti-competitive work, so that innovation can grow.’
Google said- Yelp’s claims are not new
On Yelp’s allegations, a Google spokesperson said, ‘Yelp’s claims are not new. Similar claims were rejected years ago by the FTC and recently by the judge in the DOJ case. We are appealing other aspects of the decision that Yelp has cited. Google will defend itself with full force against Yelp’s baseless claims.’
