U.S. law firm Hausfeld & Co. LLP and Avisa Partners, an antitrust consulting company, have launched the “Google Redress and Integrity Platform,” or GRIP, which encourages individuals and companies to come forward with civil claims of Google’s alleged anti-competitive behavior.
According to Bloomberg Business, depending on the nature of the case, Google could incur some steep fines. A lawyer at Hausfeld told reporters in Brussels that individual claims could force Google to fork over about 100 million euros ($112.8 million)—and this could not have come at a worse time for the tech giant.
Google is facing the threat of a huge fine of up to £4.3 billion from the European Commission for its alleged anticompetitive behavior. At the same time, Hausfeld is pushing to make it easier for victims to file claims of antitrust violations across Europe.
In June, the European Commission confirmed that a number of probes into Google’s unfair behavior in the marketplace are ongoing. According to a report on BBC, European Union Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who is looking to create a digital single market, said that there are still active investigations into Google’s travel, advertising, mapping flight and third party data service.
In some European countries, Google places its own web services in query results as opposed to sharing the space with its rivals. In addition to being fined, Google might be forced to restructure its business practices to allow other companies, such as Yelp to display their results in search queries.
Last week, Google fired back at the commission saying that it is calling for a “peculiar and problematic remedy, requiring that Google show ads sourced and ranked by other companies within our advertising space,” said Kent Walker, Google’s general counsel in blogpost.
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