A class action lawsuit has been filed against Google in a British court, seeking the equivalent of $6.6 billion for, among other things, using its near-exclusive position in the online search market to raise advertising prices.
The American company was also accused of restricting the functioning of competing search engines and thus working to monopolize the online search engine advertising market. The lawsuit was filed by Or Brook on behalf of – as reported by CNBC – hundreds of thousands of organizations based in Great Britain.
“Currently, UK businesses and organisations, regardless of size, have little choice but to use Google to advertise their products and services,” Brook said, emphasising that the company uses its market dominance to inflate prices for advertisers.
The lawsuit filed Tuesday also alleges that Google has taken a number of actions to limit competition in search, including striking deals with smartphone makers to preinstall Google Search and Chrome on Android devices and paying Apple to guarantee Google would be the default search engine in its Safari browser.
CNBC emphasizes that it was unable to obtain a comment from Google. The portal cited the results of a 2020 study by the British Competition and Markets Authority, which showed that 90 percent of all revenues in the search engine advertising market went to Google. (PAP)
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