Google Is Sued by Texas Credit Union Over Alleged Search Engine 'Monopoly'

A credit union based in Houston has slapped Google with an antitrust suit, claiming that the Big Tech titan broke California state antitrust law by allegedly monopolizing the online search advertising market with its Google Search feature.

Cathy K. Robinson of Wright, Finlay & Zak filed the complaint on Tuesday in Santa Clara County Superior Court on behalf of First Service Credit Union (FSCU). The suit, which accused Google of abusing its “monopoly power” to exert unchecked control over the “quantity of ad inventory,” alleged violations of California’s Cartwright Act, unfair business practices and unfair competition. Robinson did not immediately return a request for comment and counsel has yet to appear for the defendant.

According to the complaint, FSCU’s Google advertising account was unexpectedly suspended on July 29 after a third-party vendor that it had contracted with to run its website, Americaneagle.com, made changes to the account.

FSCU consequently sent eight appeals to Google to restore the account after reversing the changes, meeting with a Google representative and stringently auditing its website for potential infractions of Google’s ad policies, all of which Google allegedly rejected without explanation. To this day, it said, “it is completely unknown why Defendants are refusing to lift a suspension on Plaintiff from placing its Google Ads.”

FSCU also claimed that Google does not provide advertisers with a copy of its ad policies and reserves the right to amend them without warning. “As a result, it is virtually impossible for advertisers to figure out what agreements and provisions govern their conduct and content,” it said.

As a result of its inability to advertise on Google, the claim said, FSCU has suffered a substantial blow to its bottom line.

“By eliminating competition from rival search engines, Google has harmed advertisers by reducing the number of commercially viable search engines on which to place ads. As a result, advertisers are beholden to Google,” the complaint said.

The complaint echoes a landmark antitrust suit filed against Google by Yelp, an online platform that provides crowdsourced reviews of businesses, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Aug. 28.

Yelp, which has crusaded against Google’s “anticompetitive” behavior for more than a decade and provided multiple congressional testimonies about the Big Tech giant’s alleged antitrust violations, advanced similar allegations about Google’s stranglehold on the search advertising industry and claimed that it had breached both federal and California antitrust laws.

Yelp General Counsel Aaron Schur said in an emailed statement that the complaint was built on the foundation of a “watershed” Aug. 5 ruling in United States v. Google by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which described Google as a ”monopolist” and found that the “dominance” of its Google Search function had violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act. According to Yelp’s complaint, Google maintains 88% market share in the general search services market.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.