Legal action is being brought by Or Brook which claims thousands of UK businesses were overcharged by Google for search advertising.

It has been decided by the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal that search engine and tech giant Google will face a £5bn lawsuit that argues the platform abused its dominance in the general search market to ramp up search advertising prices for nearly 900,000 businesses and organisations. 

The case is being brought by Or Brook Class Representative Limited, which is controlled by leading competition law academic Dr Or Brook, on behalf of the affected UK businesses and organisations that used Google’s search advertising services.

The tribunal also rejected Google’s argument that businesses should have to ‘opt-in’ if they intended to be a part of the suit, deciding instead that there was very little to be said in favour of such a system, which will proceed using an opt-out model. 

The tribunal criticised Google’s “nit-picking” in regards to how it might approach distributing potential compensation if the case is successful and it was also noted that the organisation had failed in its efforts to engage with Brook in a time-effective manner. 

Commenting on the ruling, Brook said: “I’m delighted with this decision. It is an important step toward securing compensation for the many thousands of UK businesses and organisations that have been overcharged for using Google’s search advertising services.

“Regulators in the UK and beyond have repeatedly recognised the consequences of Google’s sheer dominance in the general search market. For businesses that depend on search advertising to reach customers, that dominance carries a real financial cost.”

Google has been hit with a number of accusations, lawsuits and fines regarding alleged abuse of power and the creation of an anti-competitive landscape. In late July, the European Commission hit Google with €890m in fines for breaching the bloc’s Digital Markets Act through Google Search and the Google Play app store.

Just prior to the fine, the European Union ordered Google to create a level playing field among its competitors, as a means of curtailing Big Tech dominance.

And in June, the UK’s competition watchdog ordered Google to alter its search tool in order to help businesses better integrate it and understand how it works. As part of the new requirements, Google must rank search results organically and make free-of-charge data portability available to third-party businesses.

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