Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc., attends a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden in the East Room of the White House in August 2021. Photo by Stefani Reynolds/UPI |
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Feb. 7 (UPI) -- The Swedish price comparison firm PriceRunner has filed a $2.4 billion lawsuit against Google claiming that the search giant breached European Union antitrust laws by manipulating search results in favor of its own shopping services.
"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 14 years and still today," Mikael Lindahl, CEO of PriceRunner, said in a statement.
The lawsuit, filed in a specialized court in Stockholm, claims that Google has not complied with EU laws even after the company was hit with a historic $2.8 billion fine from the European Commission in 2017 for illegally funneling shoppers to its own service.
In response to the decision from the European Commission, Google announced in 2017 that it would make changes to its shopping ads and bid on ads "in equal terms" with other companies.
Google had also appealed the decision but the appeal was struck down by a top court in the EU in November, which said that favoring of its own services by Google was done intentionally rather than as a result of negligence.
"The behavior is also harmful to consumers. Accountancy company Grant Thornton has established that prices for the offers shown in Google's own comparison-shopping service are 12% to 14% higher than from other services," PriceRunner said in a press release.
"For the most popular areas, clothes and shoes prices, these are 16% to 37% higher. As a result of Google's violation, European consumers are estimated to be overpaying billions every year."
PriceRunner said that the damages to its company will continue to increase "significantly" during the course of litigation if Google continues to violate antitrust laws.
A Google spokesperson told CNBC on Monday that the company looked forward to defending against the lawsuit in court and that the changes it had made after the European Commission decision were working "successfully."
"The system is subject to intensive monitoring by the EU Commission and two sets of outside experts," the spokesperson said. "PriceRunner chose not to use shopping ads on Google, so may not have seen the same successes that others have."
