With all of this build up between the European Commission (EC) and Google in the antitrust case revolving around the alleged abuse of the market in shopping search, a European law firm and a “public affairs” firm have decided to team up to help European companies sue Google. In a report by New York Times, these “have created an online platform, to help companies sue Google for financial damages in European courts.”
These firms, Hausfeld and Avisa, said that they are providing various types of support, such as representation, to potential litigants. Already, there are quite a few companies who have file civil complaints. Because of this, it’ll be no surprise if this will cause others to follow suit. Since these antitrust civil lawsuits are still quite new to Europe, there isn’t any way to accurately assess the potential success of them.
Because of the cultural and political issues that are now deeply intertwined with the Google antitrust case, there are a number of European firms and media companies who are finding it difficult to compete in a changing market, and they find it easy to blame it on Google, rather than admit that blame could be on their own organizations, services, and products. They also feel that they have some sort of entitlement, saying things like, “Google has diverted our traffic,” and the like.
It’s clear that this antitrust case is picking up steam, and we’ll just have to keep tuned in to see what happens.