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US: Yelp targets Google’s employees in antitrust campaign

By  |  May 24, 2018

Yelp and TripAdvisor have formed a coalition targeting Google employees, asking them to make Google’s effective monopoly on internet searches fair for its competitors.

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    The coalition, called “Focus on the User,” is led by Yelp and TripAdvisor and also consists of a few progressive activist organizations. It plans on targeting Google employees through online ads with an animated video they produced that explains why Google’s current practices are anti-competitive, Recode reported Wednesday, May 23.

    The argument against Google is that the search engine is placing its own content, such as its shopping site, above its competitors in search results. Since 90% of all internet searches are done on Google, the site has an effective monopoly on the industry, making it especially susceptible to anti-competitive behavior.

    Google has also faced complaints of violating antitrust laws before. Yelp recently filed an antitrust complaint against Google in the European Union and the European Union’s Competition Commission fined Google US$2.8 billion for placing its shopping content in before its competitors in 2017.

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