The final damages amount of the lawsuit is expected to be substantially higher than the preliminary amount
PriceRunner is a price comparison service based in Sweden. (Credit: I99pema/Wikimedia Commons)
PriceRunner, a Swedish price comparison service, has sued Google for a preliminary amount of around SEK22bn (€2.1bn) in a Stockholm court over alleged manipulation of search results.
The lawsuit was filed at the Patent and Market Court in the Swedish capital.
PriceRunner alleged that Google has caused harm to European consumers who overpay when shopping online due to the manipulation of results on its search engine. The former said that Google’s practice is also affecting it as well as other comparison shopping services
The Swedish firm said that as the violation by the search engine is still going on, the amount of damages it seeks will increase every day. Due to this, PriceRunner anticipates that the final damages amount of its lawsuit will be substantially higher than the preliminary amount.
PriceRunner CEO Mikael Lindahl claimed that consumers have been suffering a lot from Google’s infringement of the competition law for the last 14 years.
Lindahl said: “This is also a matter of survival for many European entrepreneurial companies and job opportunities within tech.
“If American tech giants, through a market position almost equal to a monopoly, are allowed to do exactly as they please and manipulate markets, we can almost certainly count on the fact that many tech companies in Europe will be affected far beyond the comparison shopping market in focus today.”
In 2017, European Union (EU) Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager fined Google for violating EU antitrust laws by allegedly manipulating search results to favour its own comparison shopping services ahead of rival comparison shopping services.
In November 2021, the EU’s General Court largely dismissed the internet major’s challenge against the fine after ruling that the European Commission (EC) rightly found its practices to be impacting competition.
PriceRunner has also alleged that Google has not conformed to the EC’s decision and is still misusing its dominant position. The Swedish firm said that due to this, its own and that of other comparison shopping services’ internet traffic and the resulting profits are diverted to Google’s own services.
Last month, Google filed an appeal at the European Court of Justice against the $2.8bn antitrust fine imposed in 2017 by the EC.