Alphabet’s Google is in fresh trouble. It has been sued in the United Kingdom for potential damages of up to 5 billion pounds (USD 6.6 billion) in a class action alleging the company abused its dominant market position in the online search industry. The class action, filed at the Competition Appeal Tribunal, argues that Google’s actions enabled it to charge higher prices for the advertisements that appear in search enquiries than it otherwise could in a competitive market.
It said the American tech giant contracted phone makers to pre-install Google Search and the Chrome browser on Android devices and paid Apple to make it the default iPhone search engine, to shut out competition. The claim, filed by competition law expert Or Brook on behalf of thousands of businesses, alleges Google ensured its search engine had better functionality and more features for Google’s own advertising offering than that of its competitors.
As per a Google spokesperson, “This was yet another speculative and opportunistic case. We will argue against it vigorously. Consumers and advertisers use Google because it is helpful, not because there are no alternatives.”
Brook, who said businesses had almost no choice but to use Google ads to advertise their products and services, added, “Regulators around the world have described Google as a monopoly and securing a spot on Google’s top pages is essential for visibility. Google has been leveraging its dominance in the general search and search advertising market to overcharge advertisers.”
Britain’s antitrust regulator has already launched an investigation into Google’s search services, including their impact on advertising markets, in January 2025. The Competition and Markets Authority said at the time that millions of people and businesses relied on Google’s services, which accounted for 90% of searches and were used by more than 200,000 British businesses to advertise.
Google, meanwhile, plans to appeal against the “adverse” portion of the court decision in the US Department of Justice’s monopoly case against the technology giant. District Judge Leonie Brinkema found the search engine giant liable for “wilfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power in markets for publisher ad servers and ad exchanges.”
Publisher ad servers are platforms used by websites to store and manage their digital advertising inventory. Along with ad exchanges, the technology allows news publishers and other online content providers to make money by selling advertising. The judge also ruled that Google illegally dominates two markets for online advertising technology.
The company said that the judge had issued a mixed decision, where she ruled that the DOJ failed to show that Google’s advertiser tools or acquisitions of DoubleClick and AdMeld were anticompetitive but that Google’s publisher tools violated antitrust laws by excluding rivals. The DOJ is also pitching for Google to sell off at least its Google Ad Manager, which includes the company’s publisher ad server and ad exchange.