Google was ordered to pay Klarna $2 billion in damages. According to a report on the Chinese website of the British Financial Times on the 2nd, Google has been ordered to pay nearly US$2 billion in damages to Klarna to make up for the revenue loss of PriceRunner, a price comparison website owned by the latter (a financial technology company).A Swedish court previously ruled that Google gave priority to its own price comparison service in search results.
The report stated,The award, which includes nearly $500 million in accrued interest, is the highest amount of damages ever awarded in a Swedish antitrust case, but is only a partial victory for Klarna because the company had previously sought "significantly higher" damages of nearly $8 billion, the court disclosed on Wednesday.
The report quoted the Stockholm Patent and Market Court as saying, "PriceRunner was found to have suffered damage due to Google's illegal favoritism of its own price comparison service for many years."
According to Reuters, in 2008, Google began to display its price comparison shopping service more prominently in search results, and traffic to rival price comparison websites dropped sharply.
In 2017, then-EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager fined Google for using its shopping price comparison service to gain an unfair competitive advantage over smaller European rivals. Google's appeal of the decision in 2021 was dismissed.
Thereafter,A number of companies affected by Google's practices have filed damages lawsuits against the world's largest search engine.A German court last year ordered Google to pay approximately 465 million euros to price comparison website Idealo and 107 million euros to another German platform Producto.
Similar lawsuits have emerged in the UK, where price comparison companies including Kelkoo and Foundem are seeking compensation from Google. Italy's Moltiply Group, which operates price comparison website Trovaprezzi.it, is seeking 2.97 billion euros in damages.
In response, a Google spokesperson said that since 2017, the company has made adjustments to its shopping ads, which have worked well and created jobs for comparison shopping services and promoted the growth of related businesses. A Google spokesperson said: "We disagree with the court's decision and we are reviewing and considering our legal options."
The above report pointed out that PriceRunner was acquired by Sweden's Klarna in 2022. The company sought compensation, saying it had lost profits in the UK since 2008 and in Sweden and Denmark since 2013.
The above report also said that although Klarna welcomed the ruling, the company is unlikely to receive any compensation soon because Google can appeal.
Klarna's lawyer Pontus Scherp told Reuters: "We can expect the appeal to last a year or even several years."