A wannabe B2B search engine company called TradeComet.com has sued Google for antitrust charging Google with predatory conduct aimed at driving it out of business by "imposing massive, unjustified price increases" on its keyword search rates.

It claims Google raised its prices 10,000% after identifying it as a competitor. Its property SourceTool.com was initially spending $500,000 a month with Google and getting 650,000 visits a day, even becoming a Google "Site of the Week."

TradeComet CEO Dan Savage, a publishing type out of Ziff-Davis and McGraw Hill, claims the price hike cut his traffic by 99% "virtually overnight" and that the operation is "no longer competitively viable." He wants damages.

He says, "Citing an ambiguous quality score determined by a secretive algorithm to justify the price increase, Google refused to consider reductions even after SourceTool.com invested the company's savings to make the changes that Google said would rectify the supposed problems."

Conspiracy theorists will take sustenance from the fact that TradeComet's lawyer Rick Rule of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft has represented Microsoft on multiple antitrust issues.

Rule was also once the head of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division.