A Sweden-based price comparison service called PriceRunner is suing Google in the EU after it’s proved that Google violated antitrust law.
An EU court has ruled that Google favored its own price comparison service among others in its results, which gave it an advantage over others. This led PriceRunner to sue Google for €2.42 billion for diverting the traffic and profits all these years.
Suing Google For Violating Laws
Google facing lawsuits around the world due to its abusive market position isn’t new. While the company tends to escape from most, it was now proved by an EU court that it intentionally violated a local rule.
Google since last year was accused of prioritizing its own price comparison service in the results while pushing other similar services aside. Though Google fought back through appealing, the EU General Court upheld a decision to penalize Google a sum of €2.42 billion (US$2.8 billion), for proving to be favoring its own comparison shopping services.
This led PriceRunner, a Sweden-based price comparison service to sue Google in the EU, for a proven case of anti-trust violation. The company announced today pressing charges for a record €2.1 billion ($2.4 billion), and stating as
“We are … 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.”
And to note, the company keeps on increasing these compensation charges every day, until the lawsuit is finalized and levied. So expect the final amount to be significantly higher than what’s announced today.
Losing the lawsuit, Google said, “We feel there are areas that require legal clarification from the European Court of Justice.”
