Swedish price comparison website PriceRunner said Monday it is suing Google for 2.1 billion euros ($2.4 billion) for manipulating internet search results and thus promoting its own comparison shopping services
ZURICH (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th February, 2022) Swedish price comparison website PriceRunner said Monday it is suing Google for 2.1 billion Euros ($2.4 billion) for manipulating internet search results and thus promoting its own comparison shopping services.
The lawsuit was filed at the Patent and Market Court in Stockholm and follows a November ruling of the European General Court which upheld the decision of the European Commission, which established in 2017 that Google violated European competition laws by unlawfully giving advantage to its service Google Shopping. For the violations, Google was fined 2.4 billion euros.
"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," PriceRunner CEO Mikael Lindahl said, as quoted by the company.
Similar practices by monopolists hit entrepreneurial companies in Europe and affect job opportunities within the industry, Lindahl went on.
"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," the company said.
By suing Google, PriceRunner is seeking to compensate for losses it has incurred in the United Kingdom since 2008 and in Sweden and Denmark since 2013. The legal process is likely to take several years, causing the damages to increase, as long as the violation has not been stopped, according to PriceRunner.
