Stefan Mileschin

Legal cases against Google alleging that it indulges in antitrust activities by leveraging its search engine look to be strengthened after a former ally undermined its arguments.

Tim Wu, a Columbia Law School professor and, according to Bloomberg an ally of Google, co-wrote a paper delivered over the weekend alleging that the firm dishes out its own content rather than operate an even hand to search engine results.

Wu said in the paper, presented at a conference here in Oxford over the weekend, that Google fails to show the best search results at the top of pages it returns.

It doesn’t help people by doing that, the paper continued.

However, there may be more to this attack than meets the eye. Because, according to Bloomberg, Yelp – which has an antitrust axe to grind – paid for Wu’s work on the paper.

Google degrades the quality and speed of results, according to the paper. But the data may well be used against the search outfit once cases across the world come to court.

http://www.techeye.net/internet/goog...thin-its-ranks