Google to Face UK Class Action for Alleged Abuse of Ad Power
Alphabet Inc.’s Google faces a class action lawsuit over alleged abuse of its dominance after an antitrust tribunal allowed a claim on behalf of hundreds of thousands of British firms to go ahead.
The lawsuit alleged that Google overcharged businesses that paid for online advertising and abused its dominance over mobile operating systems, app distribution and search advertising. The Competition Appeal Tribunal on Wednesday rejected Google’s bid to stop the claim from going ahead on an opt out basis.
“The proposed collective proceedings meet the eligibility condition,” the judges said in the ruling. Eligible UK businesses will automatically be included as part of the claim unless they opt out, the tribunal ruled.
Lawyers for Or Brook, a competition law academic acting as the class representative, estimated about 880,000 firms were covered by the claim, which sought as much as £5 billion ($6.7 billion) in damages.
“This is a speculative and opportunistic case – and we will argue against it vigorously,” Google’s spokesperson said in a statement.
The ruling allows the case to proceed to a trial later on the merits and does not imply that Google broke any law.
It’s an “important step toward securing compensation for the many thousands of UK businesses and organizations that have been overcharged for using Google’s search advertising services,” Brook said in a statement.
Photograph: Signage outside the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, on July 21, 2026; photo credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
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