Google is facing further court action over alleged anti-competitive practices after a French company filed an action claiming damages of €295 million.
1plusV - which runs the ejustice.fr website and describes itself as a search engine technology innovator - launched the proceedings in the Commercial Court of Paris, claiming Google has ruined its business by making it hard to find.
The problems we face are important for electronic commerce and the economy in general and even indirectly to the preservation of democratic values
The vertical search firm said that Google has used a number of anti-competitive practices for four years, which the company claims has prevented it from generating traffic and attracting advertising.
1plusV claims some of its 40 sites “with significant economic potential”, have been "delisted" by Google, meaning they no longer showed up in search results. It said Google manipulated "natural results" to favour its own services and disadvantaged rivals by applying quality control criteria that did not apply to Google services.
Previous complaints
The move follows a complaint made by the company last year, and comes as Google is already facing an EU investigation into competitive practices after complaints by several technology rivals, including Microsoft.
The claim echoes an earlier case in which search engine Foundem complained to the EU about Google's competitive practices.
"The problems we face are important for electronic commerce and the economy in general and even indirectly to the preservation of democratic values in the internet age," said 1plusV's Bruno Guillard. "Our initiative, will not benefit only our company, but all the players in this growing sector of vertical search engines."
Google was still assessing the claims, but said it would tell the court it put customers first.
“We have only just received the complaint so we can't comment in detail yet,” a spokesperson said. “We always try to do what's best for our users. It's the key principle that drives our company and we look forward to explaining this."
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