Google Illegally Uses Restaurant Trade Names in Connection with ‘Illicit’ Online Ordering Storefront, Class Action Alleges

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Google’s alleged practice of funneling search engine users to environments in which it essentially serves as the middleman between the users, restaurants and third-party delivery services is deceptive and amounts to a click-generating “bait-and-switch” tactic that ultimately harms eateries, a proposed class action claims. 

The 34-page lawsuit broadly alleges Google has run afoul of the federal Lanham Act, the nation’s primary trademark law, by using without permission restaurants’ trade names in connection with the so-called “illicit storefront” through which the company captures hungry search engine users’ food orders before then selling those orders, unbeknownst to the restaurant, to third parties such as Postmates, Doordash and Grubhub for fulfillment. Per the case, Google then demands from food delivery platforms a “cut-of-the-action,” which the providers “happily pay[].” 

When Google does not have a relationship with a third-party delivery provider willing to fulfill an order from a particular restaurant, the defendant will direct a search engine user to another webpage it owns and controls and present the person with highly targeted ads in a format “even more likely to induce a paying click,” the case alleges. 

According to the lawsuit, these business models are unlawful given Google “never bothered” to obtain authorization from affected restaurants to sell their products online, and the third party delivery providers, the case says, are and were not permitted, by contract, to “license Google’s conduct.” 

The suit also chides Google for allegedly designing these two food-ordering environments purposefully to appear to a user to be “offered, sponsored, and approved” by a restaurant when they are not, an apparent tactic the lawsuit alleges Google employed “to increase orders and clicks” for its advertising business. 

Per the lawsuit, Google’s use of an “Order Online” button just below the trade name of a particular restaurant on its search engine results page leads consumers to mistakenly believe that the button will direct them to the restaurant, when instead it drives the user to Google’s “new, unauthorized, and deceptively branded webpages.” These second webpages, the case alleges, include links to competing delivery providers who pay Google a fee upon a customer being “diverted away from the restaurant and into their websites.” According to the lawsuit, Google “deliberately misbrands” the webpages such that a user forms the belief that the restaurant is involved, even though, the case alleges, “nothing can be further from the truth.”

“And while it would be easy for Google to label its service as ‘Google’s unauthorized buying service,’ Google does not dare do so,” the complaint reads. “It knows that its website is more likely to generate orders when cloaked in the imprimatur of the restaurant.” 

The filing says that Google’s motives stem from the goal of increasing orders and clicks by way of “deliberately confusing” consumers into entering and interacting with its websites. The problem, the lawsuit contends, is that Google cannot use a restaurant’s trade name without its approval, much less to “suggest associations and partnerships that do not exist.” 

The lawsuit looks to cover all persons or entities in the United States who own or operate restaurants or businesses in the food service or restaurant industry under whose trade name Google placed an “Order Delivery,” “Order Pickup” or “Order Online” button on a Google search results page or Google Maps page, and captured customer orders through Google’s “storefront” under the restaurant or business’s trade name. 

The suit also looks to represent all persons or entities in the U.S. who own or operate restaurants or businesses in the food service or restaurant industry under whose trade name Google placed an “Order Delivery,” “Order Pickup” or “Order Online” button on Google’s search results page or Google Maps page, and presented users with a Google landing page. 

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