Only a week after Google and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) settled their dispute regarding alleged anti-competitive behavior, the search giant finds itself embroiled in yet another lawsuit. This time, Google is being sued in the UK for diverting potential customers away from competing services and towards its own.
The lawsuit was filed by Foundem, an online shopping comparison Web site. It is the same company that initiated an antitrust probe by the European Union back in 2010. That investigation is still ongoing, but could potentially come to a close by the end of January.
According to a story by Bloomberg, Foundem's lawsuit claims "that it had been unfairly penalized by Google because it offers a competing shopping comparison search service. It lost web traffic as a result of being pushed down in Google's search rankings."
Additionally, Foundem claimed that "since a lack of original content is an inherent characteristic of all search services, including Google's own, that reason cannot justify" Google's assertion that it was diverting users away from the shopping Web site for not offering original content.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission already ended its antitrust probe into Google with results many compare to a slap on the wrist, declaring that Google's main reason for changing search results was to improve the user experience. The search giant was not fined or drawn into a binding agreement to change its practices. Google agreed to make some changes, such as letting companies opt out of appearing in search results and agreeing not to immediately seek injuctions against competitors desiring to use essential patents. Still, competitors and some consumer groups insist it's not doing nearly enough.
For its part, the European Union seems like it disagrees a bit with the FTC.
"We are still investigating, but my conviction is [Google] is diverting traffic," said Joaquin Almunia, EU vice president.
Google is expected to settle the lawsuit with the EU, though we'll need to wait and see what the final details will entail.
