Yelp files antitrust lawsuit against Google, alleging platform promoted its own reviews over others

Yelp accused Google on Wednesday of manipulating search results in its own favor as the biggest search business in the market, the review website announced.

Google lost a separate antitrust case earlier this month, after U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled it has maintained an unfair monopoly when it comes to searching for things online. The ruling paved the way for Yelp's antitrust lawsuit.

Yelp filed the lawsuit in a federal court in San Francisco, and claimed the search engine utilized its monopoly in the industry to skew results so Google's information on local businesses comes up on user searches, thereby eliminating the need for other review sites like Yelp. 

“Our case is about Google, the largest information gatekeeper in existence, putting its heavy thumb on the scale to stifle competition and keep consumers within its own walled garden,” Yelp said in an online blog post. 

"Google abuses its monopoly power in general search to keep users within Google’s owned ecosystem and prevents them from going to rival sites," it added.

The website also claimed Google skews the results because the quality of reviews on Yelp are better than the ones on the search engine, per CNN.

“Yelp’s claims are not new,” Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels said in a statement reported by The Verge. “Similar claims were thrown out years ago by the FTC, and recently by the judge in the DOJ’s case. On the other aspects of the decision to which Yelp refers, we are appealing. Google will vigorously defend against Yelp’s meritless claims.”

Google is expected to appeal the previous antitrust ruling.

Misty Severi is an evening news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.