Key Highlights :
Winzo, a company that specializes in creating and marketing wine accessories, has alleged that when a user searches for Winzo on Google, the search result displays its competitors’ applications via Google App Campaign. Winzo has filed a complaint with the FTC, claiming that this practice unfairly advantages its competitors and harms its reputation.
Google has been accused of favoring some of its own applications in search results, a practice known as “search engine optimization” or “SEO.” SEO is the practice of improving a website’s ranking on search engines, which can result in increased traffic and revenue.
Winzo alleges that when a user searches for Winzo on Google, the first result is a sponsored ad for an application called “Wine Scanner,” which is developed and marketed by one of Winzo’s competitors. The ad has a link to the Wine Scanner website, which is hosted on Google’s servers.
This placement of the sponsored ad harms Winzo’s reputation because it suggests that Winzo’s products are inferior to those of its competitors. Winzo also alleges that this practice results in lost sales because users are likely to select a competing product when they see the sponsored ad.
Winzo is not the only company to have filed a complaint with the FTC about Google’s search engine optimization practices. In 2015, Microsoft filed a complaint alleging that Google was promoting its own applications in search results. Google has denied any wrongdoing, and the FTC has not yet issued a ruling on the matter.