Bloomberg News
Online-reviews firm Yelp Inc. alleged that Google is breaking a promise it made as part of a 2012 regulatory settlement to not scrape content from certain third-party sites including Yelp, escalating its yearslong battle against the search giant.
Yelp YELP, -0.11% said in a letter late Sunday to Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Maureen Ohlhausen that Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG, +0.28% GOOGL, +0.20% Google is using Yelp photos for local-business listings in its search results, despite Yelp’s formal request that Google not pull such content from its site.
As part of a December 2012 settlement to end an FTC investigation into Google, the tech giant agreed to not use content, including photos and user reviews, from third-party sites that opted out of such scraping. Google’s commitment lasts through 2017 and applies to a variety of its products, including its local-business listings.
“This is a flagrant violation of Google’s promises to the FTC, and the FTC should reopen the Google case immediately,” said Luther Lowe, Yelp’s public-policy chief.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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