Google and Apple and the CEOs of both companies have been sued by one of their advertisers who is alleging that Apple agreed not to compete against Google in the internet search business in exchange for billions of dollars.
The California Crane School filed the anti-trust class-action lawsuit in the Northern District of California federal court on Dec. 27.
“My clients are limited to advertising with Google and feel wronged by that because if Apple were competing, the prices that the advertisers have to pay would be substantially less,” said Crane School’s attorney Joseph M. Alioto. “Anytime you have competition, the prices go down and the production goes up.”
The California Crane School is a national company that teaches people how to operate cranes for use on construction sites.
“Apple intended before to get into the search business but never did because they got paid,” Alioto told the Southern California Record. “If Apple got into search, Apple would be able to cut Google in half because half of Google's business comes over Apple devices and Apple could make everything very difficult to get to anyone other than themselves. Certainly, Apple has a huge following and that was the Code Red for Google.”
The complaint further alleges that the tech giants fraudulently concealed their agreement.
“They attempted to keep the payments somewhat secret in terms of the way they are accounted for it so it's not easy to find what the amounts are,” Alioto said. “Our analysis and the analysis of other people show $15 billion last year and we think that the anticipation for this year is going to be $20 billion.”
This isn’t the first anti-trust lawsuit that Google has faced.
On Dec. 16, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt joined Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and eight other states in suing Google for allegedly engaging in unfair business practices to outperform competitors.
The State of Texas v. Google accuses Google of eliminating competition by fixing privacy and online advertisements in its own favor.
“The other lawsuits don't focus on the search issue,” Alioto said. “I believe that a jury will plainly and easily find that Apple and Google have an agreement that Apple will not compete in the search business and that, as a result of that, the free enterprise system has been attacked in a very substantial way.”
The complaint includes a photo of Tim Cook of Apple and Sundar Pichai of Google having dinner, which was allegedly captured through a window of a restaurant by a passerby. The brief states that Mr. Pichai’s left arm is resting on a manila folder that contains documents.
“Usually, you never have evidence like that,” Alioto added. “The conduct is clear.”