• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, July 2, 2010

Taking an aggressive stance in an antitrust lawsuit by myTriggers, Google recently threatened not only to seek sanctions against myTriggers' attorneys, but also to have the comparison shopping site prosecuted for insurance fraud, according to new court papers.

Google attorney James Wilson sent myTriggers' lead counsel a letter in April accusing the company of making sworn statements that are inconsistent with statements made in an earlier insurance claim. "If myTriggers and its counsel decline to withdraw its counterclaim," the letter says, "please be advised that we will seek to recover Google's costs, including attorneys' fees."

That statement, and other alleged hardball tactics, came to light in papers filed recently by myTriggers. The papers also alleged that Google "has taken to threatening myTriggers with insurance fraud notwithstanding that Google has no standing to threaten such a claim, has failed to explain the basis for its threat, and has prevented myTriggers from discovery that will plainly undermine this bogus, irrelevant 'defense.'"

The court battle between myTriggers and Google began last year, when Google sued myTriggers in state court in Columbus, Ohio for allegedly failing to pay $335,000 in search marketing fees. myTriggers filed a counterclaim alleging that Google violated Ohio's antitrust law by raising myTriggers' quality score, causing the cost of its pay-per-click ads to increase by as much as 10,000 percent -- which allegedly resulted in myTriggers' largely exiting the paid-search market.

myTriggers alleges that Google hiked costs for anticompetitive reasons, arguing that myTriggers' cost-per-action model posed a threat to Google's cost-per-click system.

But it recently came to light that myTriggers previously claimed that an overheating incident led to a server crash that, in turn, resulted in the drop in quality score and resulting price increase.

In May of 2008, myTriggers sued The Hartford Insurance Company for payment of its claim stemming from the overheating. That lawsuit alleged that myTriggers' servers "went off line in two mission critical times," causing Google to drop myTriggers' quality scores.

myTriggers currently is attempting to file an amended claim that includes information about the server crash, but Google opposes that motion. The allegations that Google attempted to use the claim as leverage emerged in a dispute about whether myTriggers should be allowed to amend its papers.

myTriggers says in court papers that the current antitrust action is not inconsistent with its 2008 insurance claim. "While it is true that myTriggers suffered overheating problems," the company says, "it was Google's anticompetitive actions taken months later (and continuing to this day), as alleged in the counterclaims, that ultimately caused myTriggers to exit the market."

Judge John Bessey in Columbus held a hearing recently about whether to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that the federal Communications Decency Act protects Google from liability. That law says Web sites are immune from liability when they take steps to remove potentially objectionable content; Google argues that its actions as a publisher, including lowering companies' quality scores, are protected by that statute. Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray recently filed papers against Google on that point.