Alphabet, the parent company of Google, requested on Wednesday that a London tribunal dismiss a class action lawsuit alleging the tech giant has abused its market dominance in internet searches.
TakeAway Points:
- Alphabet, the parent company of Google, requested that a London tribunal dismiss a class action lawsuit alleging the internet giant had abused its dominance in the online search industry.
- The lawsuit, valued at up to 7 billion pounds ($9.3 billion), is the latest case focusing on the business practices of Google, which is currently facing a major antitrust trial in the United States over its online advertising business.
- Part of the lawsuit relies on the more than 4-billion-euro ($4.5 billion) fine levied on Google by the European Commission in 2018 for imposing restrictions on manufacturers of Android mobile devices, a decision being appealed by the tech company.
Google urges for UK lawsuit dismissal
Google’s parent firm, Alphabet, asked a London tribunal to reject a class action lawsuit on Wednesday. The lawsuit claimed the tech giant had exploited its market dominance in internet searches.
With a potential worth of up to 7 billion pounds ($9.3 billion), the lawsuit is the most recent to centre on Google’s business practices. The company is now the subject of a significant antitrust trial in the United States about its online advertising business.
According to the report, it is also one of several multibillion-pound cases to have been filed at Britain’s Competition Appeal Tribunal in recent years, including a similar case against Google for allegedly abusing its dominance in the online advertising market.
Consumer rights campaigner and the lawsuit’s class representative, Nikki Stopford, argue Google’s dominance allows it to increase businesses’ costs for search advertising services, which are then passed on to consumers.
The 4-billion-euro ($4.5 billion) fine levied on Google
Part of the lawsuit relies on the more than 4-billion-euro ($4.5 billion) fine levied on Google by the European Commission in 2018 for imposing restrictions on manufacturers of Android mobile devices, a decision being appealed by the tech company.
Stopford’s lawyers also argue Google reached an anticompetitive deal with Apple to make it the default search engine on Apple’s Safari browser in exchange for a share of Google’s mobile search ad revenues.
The lawyers asked the Competition Appeal Tribunal to certify the case to proceed towards a trial, a very early step in any mass lawsuit. Google, however, says the case is seriously flawed.
“The suggestion that consumers have been harmed by the Google conducts at issue is strongly rejected,” Google’s lawyer Meredith Pickford said in court documents.
Pickford added that the European Commission’s findings were simply “technical complaints about the particular form by which Google promoted its products”.
He also said that Google’s default search engine agreement with Apple was “in principle perfectly lawful”.
Google chrome users complaint revived
A U.S. appeals court ruled that Google must respond to a revived complaint from Google Chrome users who claimed that after they chose not to synchronise their browsers with their Google accounts, the corporation collected their personal information without their consent.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the lower court judge who dismissed the proposed class action should have assessed whether reasonable Chrome users consented to letting Google collect their data when they browsed online.
