Less than a month after Google lost a landmark case in which a federal judge ruled that Google was an illegal monopolist, crowdsourcing review firm Yelp has filed its own antitrust suit against Google [According to Yelp General Counsel Aaron Schur, Yelp claims that the search company “abuses its illegal monopoly in general search to engage in anticompetitive conduct, including self-representation of its inferior local products, in order to dominate the local search and local search advertising markets”

He further states that “by knowingly engaging in exclusionary and anticompetitive conduct, Google has separated traffic and revenue from its competitors, made it difficult for competitors to scale, increased costs while reducing consumer choice, and expanded its own market power”

In their claim, Yelp is asking the court to order Google to cease their allegedly anti-competitive practices and pay damages The lawsuit was filed today (August 28) in San Francisco, in the Northern District of California, the same district where a jury found late last year that Google was illegally monopolizing through its app store The antitrust lawsuit was filed by Epic Games as it continues its battle against locked app stores such as Apple and Google

Shortly after Google lost the federal lawsuit, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman told the New York Times that the ruling “is a watershed moment Now is the time to have the conversation and right the wrongs of the past”

Yelp has been a vocal critic of Google for over a decade, and for years Yelp representatives have complained about Google's use of Yelp reviews in Google products without properly compensating Yelp The company has filed complaints against Google in the EU and testified against Google in antitrust hearings in 2020

“Yelp has long fought to make Google's local search experience more beneficial for consumers and to create a level playing field for competing vertical search services,” said Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman in a blog post

“With our actions, we seek to protect competition, safeguard consumer choice, and recover damages”

The full text of Yelp's complaint can be read here

In addition, DC District Court Judge Amit Mehta narrowed the antitrust case against Google last August; CNBC reports that Judge Mehta found that Google intentionally set up a search against third-party narrowing search companies such as Yelp and TripAdvisor to third-party narrowing search firms such as Yelp and TripAdvisor, rejecting claims from state attorneys general that Google intentionally biased results

Google search has arguably deteriorated in recent years, with Google-first search results driving many companies into Gordian SEO knots Perhaps the lawsuit has forced Google to make efforts in search that it has not made in recent years

Google concluded that “the evidence presented at this time does not support the claim that Google's vertical display of its own content at or near the top of its search results pages is a product design change made without a legitimate business reason,” according to a past FTC provides a survey

Of course, this study was completed in 2013 Ten years is a long time for Google search to change and shift to potential problems and flaws

Not to be outdone, Yelp's own internal search results push sponsored results miles before providing useful answers

If Google loses this lawsuit as well, the company may be forced to change the way it indexes search results for companies like Yelp and TripAdvisor However, we are not likely to see the impact of this for some time

Epic vs Google would open the door to non-Google app stores on Android without restrictions, including support for storefronts with their own internal billing

A Google spokesperson told Tom's Guide, “Yelp's claims are not new Similar claims were rejected years ago by the FTC and more recently by a judge in a DOJ case; we have appealed other aspects of the ruling to which Yelp refers Google will vigorously defend against Yelp's insubstantial claims”

They also sent an August 2023 blog post outlining how Google thinks Yelp wants search to work