EU Trouble Looms For Google As Lawsuit Seeks $31 Million Over AdWords

A French company has filed a new claim to reflect the harm it says it incurred after Google unplugged it from its AdWords program.

The bellwether case is likely to go to trial in Paris in January and comes at a time when European antitrust regulators are tightening their noose around the search giant. The French claim grows out of a 2010 incident in which Google abruptly terminated the AdWords account of NavX, a company that lets drivers download the location of speed traps, on the grounds the sale of radar detectors appeared to violate French law and Google’s advertising policy. The case made headlines after the French Competition Authority issued an interim order in June 2010 that required Google to clarify its ad policy and to reinstate NavX’s AdWords account. The regulator closed the case four months later after Google agreed to provide notice before terminating accounts and to provide guidelines about which sort of ads it considered inappropriate. The NavX ruling, which technically applies only to radar companies, also figured prominently in a French report last December that suggested Google was using its dominant market position to harm other competitors.