Search advertiser California Crane School cannot revive claims that Google and Apple conspired to avoid competing in the paid-search market, a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled
Thursday.
The ruling upheld a decision issued last year by U.S. District Court Judge P. Casey Pitts, who threw
out California Crane's complaint against Apple and sent the claims against Google to arbitration because its contract with advertisers requires arbitration of disputes.
California Crane, which
trains crane operators, alleged in a 2021 lawsuit that Google's longstanding arrangement to serve as the default search engine for Apple's Safari browser was part of a scheme to avoid competition. The
school contended that the companies' deal resulted in higher prices for search ads.
Pitts said in a March 2024 ruling that California Crane's allegations -- even if proven true -- wouldn't
show that Google and Apple were engaged in an illegal conspiracy.
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California Crane subsequently asked Pitts to reconsider the ruling in light of evidence that emerged during the government's
antitrust trial against Google in federal court in Washington, D.C. In that matter, the Department of Justice and a coalition of states claimed Google wrongly monopolized search due to its search
distribution deals, including the partnership with Apple.
Pitts rejected California Crane's argument, noting that the evidence in the
government's case against Google wouldn't have changed his ruling. (Shortly after Pitts issued that decision, U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C. found that Google monopolized search as a result of its distribution deals with
Apple and other companies.)
California Crane recently appealed the dismissal of its antitrust claims to the 9th Circuit.
The appellate panel sided against the company
on Thursday, ruling that its complaint lacked the kinds of detailed allegations that would have warranted further proceedings.
"Crane asserts that the public vertical agreement that sets
Google as the default search engine on Apple’s browser is evidence of a secret horizontal conspiracy involving Apple's promise not to compete with Google in the search business. But Crane failed
to advance well-pleaded allegations suggesting direct evidence of any such secret agreement," Circuit Judges Morgan Christen, Daniel Bress and Lawrence VanDyke wrote in an unsigned opinion.
They added that the public agreement between Google and Apple doesn't
include any provisions that would have prevented Apple from attempting to develop its own search engine.