Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On the evening of November 30, Beijing time, it is reported that Google and its parent company Alphabet have been sued by 130000 websites and mobile app publishers in the UK today, accusing Google of abusing its dominant position in online advertising and causing billions of dollars in losses to competitors.

In an indictment filed with the UK's Competition Court of Appeal (Competition Appeal Tribunal), the plaintiffs allege that Google and its parent company abused their dominant position in online advertising and made huge profits for themselves at the expense of tens of thousands of UK websites and mobile app publishers.

Google lost a similar case in France earlier this year. Google was fined 150 million euros ($156 million) in France for allegedly unfair treatment of customers using its online advertising platform.

In response, Toby Starr, a partner at law firm Humphries Kerstetter, said today that the fines and other investigations around the world were not enough to stop Google's unfair behaviour.

"all these regulatory actions are not enough to make up for the losses of thousands of websites and mobile app publishers in the UK who have lost billions of dollars in advertising revenue as a result of Google's actions," Starr said in a statement. " Starr added: "the only way to make up for these losses is to initiate an antitrust class action."

As early as last June, the European Union announced an investigation into Google's online advertising business to assess whether it violated the EU's fair competition law. The European Commission said at the time that the survey was aimed at assessing whether Google had used technical means to crack down on competitors in online advertising. The EU investigation focused on whether Google distorted market competition by restricting access to user data by third-party companies while keeping the data for its own use.

Margrethe Vestager Vestager, the EU's antitrust commissioner, said at the time that Google, which collects advertising data, sells advertising space and acts as an online advertising intermediary, exists in almost every part of the online advertising supply chain. This makes it difficult for competitors in the field of online advertising services to compete fairly.

Google has yet to comment on today's class action lawsuit.

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