Google’s Rivals See New Antitrust Case As Start Of Many More To Come

Google rivals believe the recent Department of Justice lawsuit against the company will open the door to future cases, CNBC reported. Rivals from around the world have gone public with their complaints that Google unfairly wields its dominance in internet search to edge out competitors since the case began.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, DC, alleges Google has abused its market powers. Google denied wrongdoing. A former Google executive also has defended the company’s business practices.

Shivaun Raff, co-founder of Foundem, complained to European competition authorities repeatedly about Google, she told CNBC.

“In normal cases, the first barrier to overcome was the Google halo effect, where people almost didn’t view Google back then as a business,” she said. “People almost viewed it as some sort of public nonprofit. Now I think that halo effect has been very much diminished.”

Luther Lowe, an executive at Yelp, told CNBC his company raised the possibility of an antitrust claim involving Google at a meeting of attorneys general years ago and that Google shortly thereafter changed the scraping practice that was troubling Yelp executives.

“The lightbulb kind of went off of,” Lowe told CNBC. “In antitrust, your weakness is your strength. It’s sort of the judo of public policy. The A word is the one thing that Google respects. And I think that kind of began our long journey.”

CNBC wrote: “Rivals from around the world have gone public with their complaints that Google unfairly wields its dominance in internet search to edge out competitors, among complaints about its opaque advertising business. And as the chorus of criticism has grown louder, Google’s glow in the eyes of those with the power to rein it in has dimmed.”

A question lingering in the tech world following the government’s suit against Google is how it will affect new products the company is developing.