Google is facing a mega lawsuit worth €5.8 billion (RM29.8 billion) in the UK, after allegedly “squeezing blood” from local companies to buy ads on its platform.
A class action has now been filed against Alphabet – Google’s parent company, for allegedly charging excessive advertising fees as a result of their absolute dominance in search engines.
Professor Or Brook from the University of Leeds has accused Google of restricting competition by forcing smartphone manufacturers to install Google Search and Chrome platforms on their phones as the main search platform, and paying Apple billions of pounds to be the default search engine in Safari.
The result?
Advertising prices have also skyrocketed, and thousands of UK businesses have had to swallow high costs since 2011.
If this claim is successful, Google could be forced to pay compensation to all UK companies that have bought ads on the platform from January 1, 2011 to April 15, 2025.
Last year alone, search advertising revenue reached £14 billion. But if you count since 2011 — that’s right, even Google’s plates have been put up for auction!
And that’s counting from 2011. You can pawn Google’s plates to pay off debts!
So far, the UK CMA has already launched an investigation, while Japan also sent a cease-and-desist on the same issue this week.
Maybe Google should start thinking about adding more employees… to help it go bankrupt?
