Google has been sued by a group of UK-based website publishers who claim the company and its parent firm Alphabet abused their dominant position in online advertising, limiting their revenue.

Law firms Geradin Partners and Humphries Kerstetter revealed in a statement that the class action claim was filed at the Competition Appeal tribunal by 130,000 businesses publishing around 1.75 million websites and apps in the UK.

It is suggested that the tech firm’s actions may have reduced advertising revenue by up to 40% for some companies.

Google has since dismissed the claims made, adding that it “works constructively with publishers across Europe.

“Our advertising tools, and those of our many adtech competitors, help millions of websites and apps fund their content, and enable businesses of all sizes to effectively reach new customers,” a spokesperson for the company said.

“These services adapt and evolve in partnership with those same publishers. This lawsuit is speculative and opportunistic.”

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The news comes months after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched a second investigation into Google’s practices in ad technology, following a probe into its Meta ‘Jedi Blue’ agreement. The CMA investigated whether Google abused its strong positions at the various levels of the ad tech stack in order to distort ad-space-selling competition.

Separately, Humphries Kerstetter partner Toby Starr has said that there are various investigations being launched into the US company’s advertising practices.

“However, none of these regulatory actions will do anything to compensate the UK publishers of thousands of websites and mobile apps who have lost billions in advertising revenue because of Google’s actions,” Starr added.

“The only way to recoup these losses is through a competition class action.”