Legal action is being brought by Or Brook which claims thousands of UK businesses were overcharged by Google for search advertising.
It has been decided by the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal that search engine and tech giant Google will face a £5bn lawsuit that argues the platform abused its dominance in the general search market to ramp up search advertising prices for nearly 900,000 businesses and organisations.
The case is being brought by Or Brook Class Representative Limited (Or Brook), which is controlled by leading competition law academic Dr Or Brook, on behalf of the affected UK businesses and organisations that used Google’s search advertising services.
The Tribunal also rejected Google’s argument that businesses should have to ‘opt-in’ if they intended to be a part of the suit, deciding instead that there was very little to be said in favour of such a system, which will proceed using an opt-out model.
There was criticism of Google’s ‘nit-picking’ in regards to how it might approach distributing potential compensation if the case is successful and it was also noted that the organisation had failed in its efforts to engage with Or Brook in a time-effective manner.
