Yelp, one of Google’s most persistent and outspoken rivals, has finally filed its own antitrust lawsuit against the search giant, less than a month after a federal judge ruled Google an illegal monopolist.
Yelp alleges that Google has created or preserved its monopoly in local search services by preferencing its own inferior vertical over competitors’, which Yelp says harmed competition and reduced the quality of local search services. Yelp claims that the way Google directs users toward its own local search vertical from its general search engine results page should be considered illegal tying of separate products to keep rivals from reaching scale.
Yelp wants the court to order Google to stop the allegedly anticompetitive conduct and…