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Canadian court certifies class action against Apple over Google search deal
A British Columbia Supreme Court judge has certified a class action against Apple over allegations that its search agreement with Google stifled competition and inflated advertising prices. Here are the details.
In recent years, Apple’s deal with Alphabet to make Google the default search engine on Safari has drawn regulatory attention in the US, the UK, and Australia, while related search competition concerns have also come under scrutiny in the EU and Japan.
While the details of each investigation differ, they all raise concerns about the impact of Google’s dominance in search, as well as the extent to which its agreements with other companies might be limiting competition.
More recently, Apple’s agreement with Google received significant attention during the US Department of Justice’s antitrust case against the search giant, which included testimony from Apple executives Eddy Cue and John Giannandrea. The latter joined Apple from Google in 2018 and led its AI efforts until stepping down earlier this year.
As a result of the US case, a federal judge ruled in August 2024 that Google had illegally maintained its monopoly in online search through anticompetitive agreements, including its deal with Apple.
Now, evidence presented during that trial has become central to a class action against Apple in Canada, which a British Columbia Supreme Court judge recently certified.
The case was initially brought in 2021 by Spark Event Rentals Ltd., an event rental company based in British Columbia. The plaintiff alleged that Apple and Google conspired to limit competition in the search market, allowing Google to charge advertisers artificially inflated prices.
Apple, meanwhile, argued that its agreement with Google was a legitimate distribution arrangement rather than an unlawful conspiracy. The company also maintained that Google was the appropriate defendant, describing itself as an “innocent bystander.”
Interestingly, the lawsuit originally named both Apple and Google as defendants, but the plaintiff later dropped Google from the case following a dispute over an arbitration clause in its advertising contracts.
With Apple now the sole defendant, Justice Thomas has allowed the case to proceed as a class action, finding sufficient grounds to examine whether Google’s payments discouraged Apple from developing its own search engine.