Ammon News - Alphabet's Google is being sued in Britain for potential damages of up to 5 billion pounds ($6.6 billion) in a class action alleging the company abused its dominant market position in the online search industry.

The class action, filed at the Competition Appeal Tribunal on Tuesday, argues that Google's actions enabled it to charge higher prices for the advertisements that appear in search inquiries than it otherwise could in a competitive market.

It said the U.S. tech giant contracted phone makers to pre-install Google Search and the Chrome browser on Android devices and paid Apple to make it the default search engine on iPhones, with the intention of shutting out competition.

The claim, filed by competition law expert Or Brook on behalf of thousands of businesses, alleges Google ensured its search engine had better functionality and more features for Google's own advertising offering than that of its competitors.

Google said this was "yet another speculative and opportunistic case". Reuters