The Patent and Market Court in Stockholm ruled Google unlawfully favored its own shopping comparison service, though the award fell well short of what PriceRunner sought
NurPhoto / Getty Images
Klarna's price-comparison unit PriceRunner won a nearly $2 billion antitrust judgment against Alphabet $GOOGL's Google on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reports, as a Swedish court ruled the search giant had unlawfully promoted its own shopping comparison service over rivals for years.
Wednesday's judgment directed Google to hand over 14.3 billion Swedish kronor plus interest — about €1.7 billion — after judges concluded that PriceRunner had been damaged by the search company's practice of elevating its own price-comparison tool above competing services in its results. Linda Kullberg, a court official, described the sum as unquestionably the biggest damages figure ever handed down in a Swedish competition dispute, according to The Journal.
PriceRunner had originally pursued roughly 80 billion kronor, so while judges rejected most of the requested sum, they nonetheless found in the company's favor on the core allegation. The 2022 lawsuit alleged that Google's behavior had pushed PriceRunner down in search rankings and eaten into its revenue for well over a decade, with the claim covering profits PriceRunner said it was deprived of in Britain going back to 2008, and in Sweden and Denmark from 2013 onward, according to Reuters.
Google said it does not agree with the ruling and will consider its legal options. "The changes we made to shopping ads back in 2017 are working successfully, generating growth and jobs for hundreds of comparison shopping services who operate more than 1,500 websites across Europe," the company's policy communications manager for Europe, Mathilde Méchin, said in a statement.
At the heart of the litigation is a regulatory action from 2017, when European Commission enforcers hit Google with a €2.42 billion penalty after determining that the company had exploited its commanding position in search to steer users toward its own shopping comparison product at rivals' expense. That penalty was confirmed by the E.U.'s top tribunal in 2024, a development that cleared the way for damages claims such as PriceRunner's to move forward in national courts without plaintiffs needing to re-establish the underlying breach, according to Bloomberg. Separately, Google was hit with a €573 million damages order by a Berlin court on behalf of two German price-comparison operators, a verdict it has also contested on appeal, Bloomberg reported.
Klarna, which went public on the New York Stock Exchange and counts PriceRunner among its units after acquiring the business in 2022, welcomed the decision. "This ruling supports a healthier, more competitive market for the way people compare products and services," said Dan Greaves, Klarna's head of communications and policy, in a statement.
Google retains the right to challenge the verdict before a higher court, and even if the award survives that process, what Klarna actually receives will likely be smaller than the headline figure once taxes are accounted for and proceeds are distributed to former PriceRunner shareholders and the litigation funder that bankrolled the case, according to Euronews. Klarna stock rose in premarket trading on the news.
Join 500,000+ readers who start their day with Quartz.
By subscribing, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
