Lawsuit claims Google’s ‘Order Online’ button directs customers away from restaurants’ sites

Google is dealing with a lawsuit from a Florida restaurant chain proprietor that accuses the corporate of directing customers to “unauthorized” Google-branded meals ordering webpages, the place it makes use of eating places names “with out their approval,” as first reported by Ars Technica.

A duplicate of the lawsuit alleges Google employs “bait-and-switch” techniques by inserting its “Order On-line” button on the high of eating places’ profile panels on the search engine. The big blue button redirects customers to a meals.google.com web page the place they will choose gadgets from a restaurant’s menu after which place an order by way of quite a lot of third-party companies, like Postmates, DoorDash, and UberEats — not by way of the restaurant itself. These companies take a fee from collaborating eating places, which, for instance, ranges wherever from 15 to 30 % with UberEats.

The lawsuit claims that Google “prominently options” eating places’ names on its ordering pages with the alleged purpose of “intentionally complicated customers into getting into and interacting with its web sites.” If a buyer locations an order by way of this web page utilizing a third-party service, the restaurant will get charged a price, and the lawsuit alleges Google will get “a cut-of-the-action.”

The lawsuit is searching for class-action standing on behalf of different eating places which will have misplaced orders to Google’s button.

Google first rolled out its “Order On-line” button in 2019. On Google’s assist web page, it tells eating places that they will flip the ordering function on or off, but it surely stays unclear whether or not it’s toggled on by default.

Google spokesperson Ashley Thompson stated in an emailed assertion to The Verge that the lawsuit represents a “mischaracterization” of the product and that the corporate will defend itself “vigorously.”

“Our purpose is to attach clients with eating places they need to order meals from and make it simpler for them to do it by way of the ‘Order On-line’ button,” Thompson stated. “We offer instruments for retailers to point whether or not they assist on-line orders or choose a selected supplier, together with their very own ordering web site. We don’t obtain any compensation for orders or integrations with this function.”

In 2019, Grubhub was criticized for getting hundreds of domains that carefully resembled these of explicit eating places with out the eating places’ involvement. These websites would function a restaurant’s title, menu, and typically even its brand, together with a web-based type to order by way of Grubhub. Final yr, town of Chicago sued Grubhub and DoorDash for “unfair and misleading” practices, and faux web sites had been simply one of many lawsuit’s allegations.