Silicon quotes Gareth Mills on the UK consumer lawsuit against Google

Google is once again facing legal action due to its leading position in the online advertising and search engine market, after a fresh lawsuit was filed against it.

A new multibillion-pound lawsuit on behalf of all UK consumers was filed against Alphabet Google with the Competition Appeal Tribunal, alleging its search engine domination came at the expense of consumers.

Gareth Mills, Partner, provides comment for Silicon:

“This claim is the latest in a sequence of class actions raised before the UK CAT claiming for losses caused to third parties by Google’s alleged abuse of a dominant position in the field of online advertising, following two previous claims made in the last 9 months.

“This claim sets out the ambitious position that this alleged action not only caused losses to online advertisers (who were forced to pay AdX’s high costs) but also to all UK consumers on the basis, it appears, that these costs were ‘passed on’.

“It is noteworthy that all these claims are being bankrolled by third party litigation funders and that Google will likely be keen to avoid a similarly adverse finding as that made in France.

“With eye-catching claim amounts and the involvement of third-party funders seeking a multiple return on investment in these class actions, it is likely that financial imperatives will be every bit as important to the parties as the exercise of competition law principles.

“The cases brought on behalf of the UK Advertiser themselves are far in advance of the latest ‘Consumers claim’ and the success of this latest claim will be predicated almost entirely on the legal and factual findings of the earlier complaints."

Read the full article in Silicon.