New legal case for Google. In Sweden this time, it’s PriceRunner, an online price comparison tool, which announcement February 7 attack Google’s parent company in court for anti-competitive practices. The Swedish site claims 2.1 billion euros to be compensated from the American giant.
The US giant is accused of breaching a 2017 antitrust order
In addition to still being entangled in antitrust cases with global regulators, Google continues legal action. The Swedish site PriceRunner assures that the American giant has “manipulated search results in favor of its own comparison shopping services”. Online price comparison claims 2.1 billion euros in damages, an amount that the site deems necessary to be compensated for the group’s anti-competitive practices. As part of this legal action against Alphabet, PriceRunner believes that the group violated a 2017 antitrust orderwanted by the European Commission.
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At the time, the Commission imposed a fine of 2.42 billion euros to Google and ordered the Google Search service to cease its illegal behavior. European legislators had noted that this gave prominence to its own price comparison service online, while demoting its rivals in organic search results. In 2017, Google did make some initial changes to how its search service works, adopting an auction model. For the competition, it was not not a good solutionbut simply a means of circumventing the legislation.
PriceRunner sues Google’s parent company for anti-competitive practices
This is why PriceRunner decided to take legal action. As the damage is still ongoing, the amount claimed by the Swedish site could be significantly higher. Mikael Lindahl, the managing director of PriceRunner, said in a press release that, “We view this lawsuit as a fight for consumers who have suffered tremendously over the past fourteen years, and still do today, from Google’s antitrust violations”. Referring to the sanction imposed by the European Commission, the leader specifies that “Google continues to abuse the market and has basically changed nothing”.
For its part, Google does not intend to let it go. The American giant is now a regular in these legal fights. The legal department and class attorneys are ready. According to a spokesperson: “Our system is subject to intensive scrutiny by the European Commission and two groups of external experts. The changes we have made since 2017 are working very well. PriceRunner made the choice not to use shopping ads on Google, so it may not have had the same success as others”.