Yelp’s Google complaint needs US action, Mississippi says

Make or break: Yelp has to come up with a plan to boost its financial performance or consider selling itself. Photo: Reuters

As the debate simmers in Washington over whether Internet companies have gotten too powerful, the Mississippi attorney general has thrown his weight behind allegations by Yelp Inc against Alphabet Inc’s Google. 

Mississippi’s Democratic attorney general, Jim Hood, urged the US Federal Trade Commission in an Oct 31 letter to “take prompt action to investigate” a complaint Yelp filed with the agency in September. Yelp told the FTC the search giant continues to scrape and use its content in violation of commitments it made in 2013 when the agency closed an investigation into its practices.