Yelp Joins Critics of European Union Antitrust Settlement With Google

Yelp, the online service increasingly popular on both sides of the Atlantic, has joined the critics formally opposing the European Union’s proposed antitrust settlement with Google.

Yelp said in its filing in the long-running European antitrust case that the results on Google’s search engine favor Google Plus Local, a direct Yelp competitor. Although Yelp, based in San Francisco, is a relative minnow compared with Google -- with annual sales of about $233 million, against Google’s nearly $60 billion -- it is one of the biggest American companies besides Microsoft to have formally opposed the settlement. The European Union’s antitrust commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, is eager to complete a deal with Google before he leaves office in the autumn.