The French search company 1plusV is suing Google for $425 million—the largest case against them in Europe—for unevenly promoting their own services ahead of their competitors. Google allegedly delisted 30 of their search engines between 2007 and 2010—consequently hurting the French company.
1plusV claims that Google is preventing the development of its competitors by only listing selective websites in their search results. The company is suing Google for the amount of business they believed they lost due to Google’s alleged immoral business practices. However, Google claims that their search results are not influenced by humans.
Google search methods are on close watch by the EU probe and US competition authorities for all of these antitrust complaints.
This is the third time 1plusV has filed a lawsuit against Google. In February 2010, they filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission and again in February of this year (http://www.telecompaper.com/news/1plusv-files-fresh-ec-competition-complaint-against-google ). Microsoft has also filed the same complaints against Google, with such branches as Foundem and Ciao. In March, Microsoft claimed that Google had prevented Bing search engine from listing on YouTube that was owned by Google.
If it’s true that Google’s ad service is unfairly knocking down competition, then they might be in some big trouble!
Tags: 1plusV, antitrust complaints, Google, search engine competition
