2/18/2009 2:48 AM ET
(RTTNews) - Tuesday, TradeComet.com LLC said it filed a complaint in the US District Court for the Southern District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging that Google Inc. (GOOG: News ) violates antitrust laws by eliminating competition and choice. Law firm Wickersham & Taft, LLP will appear for TradeComet.com.
TradeComet.com noted that it was compelled to file the lawsuit when Google continued to behave rapaciously to block search traffic by imposing massive, unjustified price hikes, which resulted in the elimination of TradeComet.com as a competitor.
In the complaint, TradeComet.com furnished details of how Google subsequently recognized TradeComet.com's subsidiary, SourceTool.com, as a competitive threat and then engaged in illegal conduct to diminish and eventually extinguish SourceTool.com's platform. SourceTool.com operated a global business-to-business, or B2B, search engine enabling buyers of industrial products to easily connect with suppliers.
At first, Google hugged its association with SourceTool.com, thereby naming them Google's 'Site of the Week'. SourceTool.com reinvested around 80% of its revenue by buying $500 thousand per month or more in Google keywords.
Dan Savage, founder and chief executive officer of SourceTool.com and TradeComet.com, commented, "With no notice, Google changed from cheerleader to tyrant when it realized we were a competitive threat. For example, Google raised my prices by 10,000 percent, which strangled our business, virtually overnight. Citing an ambiguous quality score determined by a secretive algorithm to justify the price increase, Google refused to consider reductions even after SourceTool.com invested the company's savings to make the changes that Google said would rectify the supposed problems. As a result of Google flexing its monopolistic muscle, SourceTool.com currently averages about one percent of the traffic it previously had and is no longer a competitively viable business."
According to TradeComet.com, the purpose of the lawsuit is to recover damages caused when Google's anticompetitive conduct eliminated SourceTool.com's primary source of search traffic.
GOOG closed Tuesday's regular trade at $342.66, down $15.02 or 4.20%, on a volume of 5.68 million shares.
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by RTT Staff Writer
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