Google, termed by Stoppelman as the ‘largest information gatekeeping’ has been accused of creating a monopoly in local search services and local search advertising markets. Google is said to have been participating in ant-competitive activities ultimately leading to the decrease in search result quality. Not only has Google’s monopoly affected the quality of the search results, it has also stomped over its rivals just to increase the company’s power in the market.

Yelp has also gone on record saying that it has tried long and hard to fight against Google’s anti-competitive antics. The company states that it wants to make a more equal playing field for all other search services in the market to foster healthy competition. Yelp’s main goals are to ensure healthy competition and the protection of consumer choices. Additionally, other goalposts include the recovery of damages and to curb Google; ‘s anti-competitiveness.

Yelp Sues Google: Google’s Monopoly In Local Search Services

It has been reported that Google has recently been caught obtaining its monopoly through illegal means. This includes exclusive deals with several manufacturers, cell carriers, and browser creators. This means that Google controls where and what content the consumers are exposed to. This has consequently led to the rising monopolistic dominance of Google over the local search markets.

Google has allegedly manipulated results to enhance its local search results over its rivals. The tech giant has been accused of promoting sub-par quality results since it does not want consumers to leave the site and seek other alternative search services.

Google’s monopolistic tendencies have also affected businesses in other vertical search services. Yelp, the search service that has filed the lawsuit is one of Google’s affected rivals. Due to Google’s abuse of its dominance, ad revenue and traffic have drastically decreased, despite the other services providing higher quality in terms of local search results.

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