Google battles lawsuit over ‘Order Online’ button in restaurant search results

A restaurant franchise group has filed a class-action suit against Google, which claims Google has been setting up online ordering pages without their consent that tricks potential customers into ordering from third-party delivery apps, such as Postmates or Grubhub.

The lawsuit acquired by Ars Technica, filed on behalf of Left Field Holdings (which runs the Lime Fresh Mexican Grill franchises in South Florida) claims that “Google lures consumers into its websites (to the exclusion of the restaurant’s actual website) through a classically deceptive practice, known as a ‘bait and switch.‘” The restaurant search results include a link to order online, which instead of taking the customers to the restaurant’s order page, takes them to a food.google.com page. This page provides an interface to place orders; however, it requires that the customer chooses from a participating food delivery app. The restaurants are then liable to pay for these third-party apps’ fees and lose out on a chunk of the profits.

Google has since then responded to the situation and, in a written statement to The Verge, stated:

Our goal is to connect customers with restaurants they want to order food from and make it easier for them to do it through the ‘Order Online’ button. We provide tools for merchants to indicate whether they support online orders or prefer a specific provider, including their own ordering website. We do not receive any compensation for orders or integrations with this feature.

Google Spokesperson Ashley Thompson

Google first rolled out this online ordering service in 2019, which became vital in helping support restaurants affected during the COVID-19 pandemic. It appears that this platform was a new Google acquisition at the time, and not much info is available on that; however, Google does provide a business support page with information on how this feature can be set up, managed, or turned off completely. We’ll have to wait and see what comes out of this lawsuit and if it reaches class-action status.