Yelp takes Google to court in antitrust lawsuit

Yelp filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google on Wednesday, alleging the company utilized its monopoly over the internet search business to excel in the advertising realm.

A judge ruled earlier this month that Google is a "monopolist" and violated antitrust law, opening the door to more lawsuits, including Yelp's.

“Our case is about Google, the largest information gatekeeper in existence, putting its heavy thumb on the scale to stifle competition and keep consumers within its own walled garden,” Yelp said in an online blog post on Wednesday.

“In other words, Google abuses its monopoly power in general search to keep users within Google’s owned ecosystem and prevents them from going to rival sites,” the statement said.

Yelp, an internet search review company, is a competitor of Google, which also provides user reviews on its platform. Yelp filed its lawsuit in San Francisco court, alleging that Google manipulates results to promote its own offerings when a customer searches for such results on Google. That allows Google to outperform its rivals unfairly, the company said.

Google blasted Yelp, saying its claims "are not new."

“Yelp’s claims are not new. Similar claims were thrown out years ago by the FTC , and recently by the judge in the DOJ’s case. On the other aspects of the decision to which Yelp refers, we are appealing. Google will vigorously defend against Yelp’s meritless claims,” Peter Schottenfels, a Google spokesman, said in a statement Wednesday.

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Yelp said Google would be threatened by websites such as travel company Expedia, job and employer reviewer Glassdoor, and real estate's Zillow "on a level playing field." Yelp also said Google's review system is subpar compared to its system and other services. “Google, which was late to market in this respect, has never been able to develop a high-quality local search service to rival that of Yelp and other local search platforms,” the 66-page complaint said.

As for the landmark antitrust decision in August, Google plans to appeal the verdict. The White House celebrated the decision at the time, saying it was “a victory for the American people.”