Google faces lawsuit over its ‘Order Online’ button that took customers to pages outside of restaurant sites

As first reported by Ars Technica, Google is facing a lawsuit from the owner of a Florida restaurant chain that accuses the company of directing users to unauthorized Google-branded food ordering pages, where Google made orders without their consent. The name of the restaurant was used.

A copy of the lawsuit alleges that Google used a “trick and switch” strategy to place its “Order Online” button at the top of restaurant profile boards on the search engine. This giant blue button redirects users to the food.google.com page, where they can select items from the restaurant’s menu and place their order through various third-party services such as Postmates, DoorDash, and UberEats, rather than through the restaurant itself. These services receive commissions from participating restaurants, such as UberEats, which range from 15% to 30%.

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The lawsuit alleges that Google highlighted restaurants’ names on its ordering pages in an attempt to deliberately confuse consumers into and interact with its site. If a customer places an order using a third-party service through this page, the restaurant is charged, and the lawsuit says Google gets a cut of it.

The lawsuit seeks class-action status on behalf of other restaurants that may have lost orders due to the Google button. It is reported that “online ordering” is a function button launched by Google in 2019. On Google’s support page, it tells restaurants that they can turn the ordering feature on or off, but it’s still unclear if it’s on by default.

Google spokeswoman Ashley Thompson said in an emailed statement to The Verge that the lawsuit represents a “misrepresentation” of the product and the company will defend itself “vigorously.” “Our goal is to connect customers with restaurants they want to order from and make it easier for them to do so via the ‘Order Online’ button. We provide the tools for merchants to indicate if they support online ordering or prefer particular offer merchants, including their own ordering sites. We don’t charge anything for orders or integrations with this feature.”