Financial Chronicle
A small Web site operator has filed an antitrust suit accusing Google of unfairly manipulating its advertising system to harm a potential competitor.
TradeComet.com, which operates a site called SourceTool.com, a vertical search engine for those seeking business products and services, accused Google on Tuesday of raising the advertising rates it charged the company after it realized that SourceTool was a potential competitor.
TradeComet also said Google had entered into an anti-competitive agreement with Business.com, a SourceTool rival that was offered more favourable advertising terms, despite a similar business model.
‘‘Google understood the threat that vertical search engines posed to its business model,’’ Jonathan Kanter, a partner in Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft, said Tuesday. Kanter’s firm represents Microsoft in antitrust matters. He said Microsoft had ‘‘no involvement in this matter at all.” Google said it had not reviewed the complaint in detail. ‘‘But as we have consistently made clear, the advertising market in which Google operates is highly competitive, and advertisers have a huge range of choices,’’ said Andrew Pederson, a Google spokesman.
Last year, SourceTool urged the Justice Department to block a proposed search advertising partnership between Google and Yahoo.
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