Swedish price comparison firm demands billions from Google

The Swedish price comparison site PriceRunner demands 2.1 billion euros from Google, claiming the search engine is still favouring its own comparison tool. In a previous case, Google was already proven wrong.

Abuse of power

To support its claim, PriceRunner refers to the ruling of the European General Court at the end of last year. Tat court imposed a fine of 2.42 billion euros on the tech giant for favouring its own comparison service. For years, Google integrated its price comparison service, Google Shopping, directly into the search results pages. Parent company Alphabet did not accept this ruling and filed an appeal with the European Court of Justice last month.

According to PriceRunner, Google is still abusing its dominant position. Therefore, the company filed a complaint with the court in Stockholm yesterday. “It is a matter of surviving for many European companies”, CEO Mikael Lindahl was quoted in Belgian newspaper De Tijd. PriceRunner is demanding 2.1 billion from the American search giant to compensate for their missed profits in Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom.

The case has been dragging on for more than ten years. Various European price comparison sites, including Kelkoo and prijsvergelijk.nl, went to court as early as 2010 to denounce the abuse of power by Google.