Streetmap Sues Google For Stealing Its Customers
UK-based company claims Google used underhanded tactics to dominate the online map market
Streetmap, a UK-based provider of online navigation tools, is taking Google to the High Court over the search giant’s alleged anti-competitive practices.
The company claims Google stole its business by embedding its own Google Maps in search results, and downgrading the competition in the same searches. Streetmap is already a participant in the European Commission’s antitrust investigation brought against Google in 2010.
Map wars
Streetmap is a small tech company that describes itself as an “innovative provider of internet maps”. Essentially, it repackages Ordinance Survey maps and puts some advertising both on the website, and on the maps themselves.
Before it was squeezed out by Google, Streetmap was a popular destination “used by many millions” to find their way around. Its features, once impressive, now look somewhat primitive compared to Google Maps, which has become many people’s default navigation.
Streetmap says that when the search giant introduced its Maps to the UK, it made other Internet maps harder to find, damaging competition between navigation companies.
“At the centre of the case is the customer’s right to choose. This choice is distorted by Google’s dominance in internet search, and its practice of promoting its own products. In this case Google promotes Google Maps, and makes those of Google’s competitors, such as Streetmap, harder to find,” said the company in a statement.
Google’s alleged anti-competitive practices have been under investigation by the European Commission since 2010, but as of today, no formal charges have been filed.
Streetmap is one of participants in the Commission’s proceedings, along with Twenga, Visual Meta, Hot Maps and Euro-Cities.
In France, Google has already been fined €500,000 (£416,000) simply for the fact that its navigation services are free.
“We have had to take this action in an effort to protect our business and attract attention to those that, like us, have started their own technology businesses, only to find them damaged by Google’s cynical manipulation of search results,” explained Kate Sutton, commercial director of Streetmap.
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