TRADECOMET.COM VS. GOOGLE

MICROSOFT CONNECTION LOOMS IN NEW GOOGLE LAWSUIT. 

CNET NEWS courtesy of writer Charles Cooper reports

TradeComet.com has sued Google, claiming that the search company abused its market dominance to "squash" competition.

Rick Rule, who works for the company's law firm, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, claimed that SourceTool.com and its subsidiary, TradeComet.com, "had a thriving business before Google decided to eliminate them as a competitor...We believe this complaint has strong merit and represents a serious antitrust violation.

It also turns out that Rule helped represent Microsoft during that company's antitrust battle with the United States government. The Cadwalader law firm also was employed by Microsoft on its failed bid to acquire Yahoo.

In its statement, which was issued late Tuesday, TradeComet said it filed the lawsuit "when Google refused to stop engaging in predatory conduct to block search traffic by imposing massive, unjustified price increases. Google's anti-competitive conduct eliminated TradeComet as a competitor."

TradeComet.com said that its business-to-business search engine subsidiary was targeted by Google, which "then engaged in illegal conduct to diminish and ultimately extinguish SourceTool.com's platform."

A spokesman for Google said that the company's lawyers had not had a chance to review the lawsuit. But in a statement, Google said that "the advertising market in which Google operates is highly competitive and advertisers have a huge range of choices."

Ramone Kendall -

Trade Comet is a tiny start up, which utilizes GOOGLE'S search engine for purposes of selling industrial products. Trade comet  was one of many such vertical search engines targeted by google with higher fees. However unlike the others, who will remain nameless they are fighting back. This appears to be a truly David and Goliath situation as Trade comet  tries to take advantage of changing tide against Google and Microsoft. This stems from a Government blocked deal between Yahoo and Google to share adds.  Timing for Trade Comet is everything as they try to stand their ground. At present google possesses nearly 70% percent share of the search add market.... They are pretty omnipotent... RJK