A class action lawsuit seeking £5bn ($6.6bn) from Google was filed at the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal this week, accusing the US company of using its dominant position in online search to drive up the cost of online advertising.
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The lawsuit alleges that Google is abusing its market position to restrict the work of competing search engines in order to strengthen its own position. This activity makes Google the only company that offers favorable conditions for placing advertising on the Internet.
The lawsuit was brought by antitrust expert Or Brook on behalf of hundreds of thousands of UK businesses and organisations that used Google’s search engine advertising services between 1 January 2011 and the filing of the lawsuit. She will be represented by law firm Geradin Partners.
«Today, UK businesses and organisations, large and small, have little choice but to use Google advertising to promote their goods and services,” the lawsuit says.
Or Brooke said she believed Google was using its dominant position in the internet search and online advertising market to inflate prices for its services. She said the lawsuit would hold Google accountable for its illegal actions and help to obtain compensation for the UK advertisers who suffered.
Google called the case “speculative and opportunistic” and expressed its readiness to “vigorously” contest the charges in court. “Consumers and advertisers use Google because it is useful, not because there is no alternative,” the company representative added.
The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) conducted a study in 2020 that showed that 90% of the total revenue in the online advertising market comes from Google. The authors of the lawsuit believe that Google has taken a number of steps to limit competition in the Internet search industry. Among other things, they mention deals with smartphone manufacturers that use Google’s search engine and Chrome browser by default on their devices. They also say that Google paid Apple billions of dollars to make its service the default search engine in the Safari browser.