The Swedish price comparison website PriceRunner said that the Alphabet-owned U.S. behemoth Google had violated antitrust laws and manipulated search results.
With that, PriceRunner is suing Google for $2.4 billion. Alphabet Inc. is the parent company of Google.
According to Barrons, the company participates in the acquisition and operation of various businesses, the most popular web services are the Google search engine and Google segments, including the company's most important Internet products, such as advertisements, Android, Chrome, hardware, Google Maps, Google Cloud, Google Play, and YouTube, as well as other Google services.
This was followed by the European General Court verdict on November 10, 2021, where Google had been found promoting its comparison shopping services in its search engine instead of applying fairness. Due to this reason, the EU upheld a €2.8 billion European Commission fine or $ 54,411,728 levied against the internet giant.
However, despite the ruling last year, Google, to this date, is still not paying the compensation that was ruled by the court. The reason for this has been reportedly due to the fact that Google is in the process of appealing against the fine set by the EU. Google believes that "there are areas that require legal clarification from the European Court of Justice."
As stated by Reuters, in the lawsuit of the Sweden-based company, it was stated that the lawsuit had been filed in Sweden to compel Google to compensate it for the profits it had lost in Sweden, Denmark, and United Kingdom since 2008.
Previous Court Decision on Google Lawsuit
Engadget reported that the European Union General Court upheld a decision last November to fine Google with a hefty price of US$2.8 billion for favoring its comparison shopping services over those of competitors.
It was reported that the tech giant was found to have unjustly favored its price matching services and directed customers to its items rather than those of competitors.
Despite the fact that the $2.8 billion punishment represents a minuscule percentage of the $2 trillion market capitalization of Alphabet, it was the largest financial penalty the commission had ever imposed.
The court statement stated:
"The General Court finds that, by favoring its own comparison shopping service on its general results pages through more favorable display and positioning, while relegating the results from competing comparison services in those pages by means of ranking algorithms, Google departed from competition on the merits."
Google vs. PriceRunner: Complainants Assertion
The Founder and CEO Mikael Lindahl, clarified that PriceRunner is seeking compensation for all the damages Google has violated over a long time. In addition, Lindahl firmly believes that this lawsuit is a fight for consumers who have suffered tremendously due to Google's infringement of competition law for the past fourteen years and continue to do so until today.
As written in Engadget, PriceRunner states that Google is "abusing its dominant position" and has a "monopoly-like position" in Europe. Furthermore, the company also adds that they highly believe Google has not yet complied with the EU Commission's decision.
Nevertheless, the Swedish company also assumes that since this violation hasn't been addressed with the proper compensation, the violation is still ongoing, and the amount of damages increases daily. They anticipate that the final damages amount of the lawsuit will be significantly higher.
The company claimed that traffic and profits are being diverted away from itself and other shopping services and that its offers are higher than those of other shopping services, causing consumers to suffer.
