The industry leaders dogpiling on Zillow 

Zillow may be the dominant home search site, but that didn't shield it from a battery of criticisms this week as several industry leaders took the opportunity to pitch their strengths — while also knocking on the portal giant. 

Homes.com 'in a universe of one': Hot on the heels of filing a lawsuit against Zillow for alleged copyright infringement, CoStar Group CEO Andy Florance took the stage at Inman Connect in San Diego July 30 to claim a self-defined victory in the ongoing portal wars.

"We're not competing against either Realtor[.com] or Zillow for customers," he told Inman CEO Emily Paquette in reference to CoStar's Homes.com. "We are doing something completely different. In essence, we are now No. 1 at that."

Florance characterized Homes.com as being "in a universe of one" in its marketing and support for agents, claiming that the home search site is "the only pro-agent site."

A host of criticisms: Florance has routinely taken aim at Zillow's business model — specifically the Premier Agent program — which he has criticized as a "lead diversion" model versus Homes.com's "your listing, your lead" strategy that emphasizes listing agents. 

More recently, Florance shared a note with agents in April condemning Zillow's new Listing Access Standards, saying the home search leader had "overplayed its hand" and claiming the effort was rooted in "protecting Zillow's ability to profit from your listings by selling your leads to competing agents." Florance upped his ire with Zillow's listing rules in July, taking to LinkedIn to encourage agents across the country to "stand up to Zillow's bullying."

Zillow 'closing down' its leads business? Damian Eales, CEO of Realtor.com, also took to the Inman stage this week to comment on the home search contest. Eales — himself a frequent target of Florance — suggested that Realtor.com has been gaining market share while Zillow has seen its business shrink.

"You know the reality is that Zillow is selling their leads, their audience, to fewer and fewer customers. They're closing it down. The reality is that they're selling more and more of those customers their mortgage [product]," he said to session moderator and ERA Ventures Managing Partner Clelia Peters.

But Eales also had plenty of shade for Homes.com, referring to the portal as "the smaller one" when discussing the top home search sites. "It's so much fun watching CoStar torch billions of dollars to get $17 million worth of revenue per quarter," he said. 

Jabs from Reffkin: Not to be outdone, Compass CEO Robert Reffkin — who has also feuded with Zillow, both in public statements and in the court system — took his criticism of the home search leader to cable news on July 31. 

On CNBC's "Squawk Box," Reffkin briefly discussed with the show's hosts why Compass was suing Zillow. When asked if he really believed Zillow is a monopoly, Reffkin responded affirmatively.

"Oh absolutely," he said. "We're suing them as a monopoly — they even say that they have 70% market share. Imagine a world where the dominant platform in everything — Google, Amazon, Apple — said that if you don't list on me, we're going to ban you."