Streetmap loses appeal over Google's promotion of Google Maps

Old-school mapping rival to Google loses 'abuse of dominance' court case

Streetmap, the online mapping service that lost out to Google when it introduced Google Maps, has lost its appeal in the High Court over claims that the internet giant unfairly promoted Google Maps on its search service.

The appeal judgement was delivered this morning by Lord Justice David Lloyd Jones in London's Administrative Court.

Streetmap had argued that Google had abused its position in internet search in order to promote its rival mapping service, when it introduced Google Maps more than a decade ago. Google re-ordered its page in order to provide local information on the top-right of its search results. This gave its mapping service an unfair advantage over others', claimed Streetmap.

While the case last year concluded that Streetmap had been harmed as a result, it also decided that this harm had not been "appreciable".

In the case, Google even denied that it was even dominant in the online search market.

"The essential thrust [of Streetmap's legal argument] was that the respondent [Google] was giving Google Maps an unfair advantage," said Lloyd Jones. "The fact that the inclusion of a map at the top of the page would put a link to the applicant's sites lower down the page was of little significance."

In the appeal, Streetmap put forward a number of measures that Google could have taken, but these were dismissed by both the judge in the original case and by Lloyd Jones as not as technically straightforward as Streetmap had argued.