Stockholm (AFP) – A Swedish court began hearing arguments Monday in a lawsuit brought by Swedish price comparison site Pricerunner, owned by Klarna, against tech giant Google for over $8 billion for promoting its own shopping comparisons in search results. The Swedish tech startup filed its suit with the Patent and Market Court in Stockholm in 2022, following a European Union General Court ruling that Google “breached EU antitrust laws by manipulating search results in favour of their own comparison shopping services”.
Originally, Pricerunner said it was suing Google for around $2 billion but said at the time it expected the “final damages amount of the lawsuit to be significantly higher”, given that “the violation is still ongoing”. In a statement, Swedish fintech giant Klarna — which acquired Pricerunner in 2022 — noted that the European Commission already ruled in 2017 “that Google had violated competition law by favouring its own shopping service”. The European Court of Justice upheld the ruling in 2024. Klarna is now demanding compensation in accordance with the ruling, it added.
“We’re seeking approximately 78 billion kronor ($8.3 billion), based on economic analysis of losses incurred,” Klarna spokesman John Craske told AFP in an email Monday. Craske added that the damages sought continued to “grow daily”. Klarna said in a statement on Friday that “to reach consumers online, you need to be visible in search results. And that’s where Google has almost complete power”, noting that more than 90 percent of searches in Europe go through Google’s platform.
It also said that prior to Google launching its own price comparison service, independent price comparison sites were shown high up in search results. “We strongly oppose this lawsuit and look forward to presenting our case in court,” a Google spokesman told AFP. The spokesman added that changes Google had made in 2017 in response to the European Commission’s decision were “working well”. “The number of price comparison sites in Europe using the system has multiplied from seven then to 1,550 today, and the European Commission has not intervened.”
The trial is scheduled to last until December 19.
© 2024 AFP
