PriceRunner the price comparison service based in Sweden has this week announced it is suing Google for a massive €2.1 billion or roughly $2.4 billion. The preliminary amount was filed at the Patent and Market Court in Stockholm and follows on from the conclusion of the European court ruling that Google breached EU antitrust laws. Google was found guilty of manipulating search results in favour of their own comparison shopping services.
After an investigation over almost 8 years, the European Commission announced in June 2017 that Google had violated European competition laws by giving unfair advantages on its own search engine to its own comparison shopping service Google Shopping.
“Google has thereby caused harm to European consumers who overpay when shopping online as well as to PriceRunner and other comparison shopping services. Since the violation is still ongoing the amount of damages increases every day, we expect the final damages amount of the lawsuit to be significantly higher. “
PriceRunner sues Google
“After extensive and thorough preparations, we have today sued Google for close to 2.1 billion euros. We are of course seeking compensation for the damage Google has caused us during many years, but are also seeing this lawsuit as a fight for consumers who have suffered tremendously from Google’s infringement of the competition law for the past fourteen years and still today” said Mikael Lindahl, CEO of PriceRunner”
“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.”
Source : PR