Google has long been the dominant search engine. Google monetizes search by charging for the placement of paid results (search advertising), which is how Google earns the majority of its revenues.

The proposed claim alleges that Google has breached competition law by abusing its dominance in the search advertising market.

In particular:

• Google has entered into a large number of agreements with Android mobile phone manufacturers in order to secure for it the status of default search provider on practically all mobile phones and devices sold within the UK.
• Google has paid Apple vast sums of money to ensure that Google search is the default search engine on iPhones and other Apple iOS devices.

These practices have prevented Google’s competitors from securing distribution of their search engines, particularly on mobile devices. This has allowed Google to secure a position of dominance, and abuse that position by charging higher prices to the Proposed Class for Google’s Advertising Services.

Who are the Proposed Class

The Proposed Class comprises Advertisers which between 1 January 2011 and the date of issue of the proposed Claim Form paid Google for the placement of advertisements on Google’s search engine results page which were targeted at users situated in the UK.