Google sued for €2.1 billion for favouring its own shopping service
Google continues to take advantage of its dominant position in search engine market, the lawsuit alleges
Sweden-based price comparison service PriceRunner said on Monday that it was suing Google for about €2.1 billion (£1.8 billion) for manipulating its search results to promote the company's own shopping comparisons in results.
The firm said its lawsuit aims to make the tech giant pay compensation for the profit it had lost in the UK since 2008, as well as in Denmark and Sweden since 2013.
The move comes after the European Union's General Court in November dismissed Google's appeal against a €2.4 billion (about £2 billion) antitrust fine issued by the European Commission for demoting rival shopping services on its search engine.
PriceRunner alleges that Google has not complied with the European Commission's directives and continues to take advantage of its dominant position among search engines on the internet.
The Swedish firm expects the final damages amount in this case to be much higher, considering that the law infringement is still ongoing.
PriceRunner CEO Mikael Lindahl said they have filed the complaint following extensive and thorough preparations, adding that the lawsuit not only seeks compensation for the damage caused to them by Google during many years, but also represents customers who have suffered immensely as a result of Google's violations of competition law during the previous 14 years and still today.
"This is also a matter of survival for many European entrepreneurial companies and job opportunities within tech."
Lindahl noted that if American tech behemoths are allowed to do as they want and influence markets due to their near-monopolistic market position, many more tech businesses in Europe will be affected, far beyond the comparison shopping market in focus today.
The EU's executive branch launched the probe against Google in 2010, following multiple complaints from US and European competitors. After several years of questions, the Commission assigned the €2.4 billion fine in 2017, saying Google had systematically given prominent placement to its own shopping service in searches and demoted those of rivals.
It was the first of three antitrust penalties, totalling over €8 billion (about £6.8 billion), that the Commission has hit Google with in recent years. Following the decision, the Google amended the way its shopping services worked but appealed the penalty.
In their November ruling, the EU judges backed the Commission's finding that Google should not favour its own shopping service over competitors.
The decision can still be challenged at the EU's top court.
In a statement to CNBC, a Google spokesperson said the company will defend its case in court.
The spokesperson added that the changes introduced by Google for shopping ads in 2017 were working well, generating growth and jobs for hundreds of comparison shopping businesses who operate over 800 websites across Europe.
"The system is subject to intensive monitoring by the EU Commission and two sets of outside experts. PriceRunner chose not to use shopping ads on Google, so may not have seen the same successes that others have."
PriceRunner's legal challenge against Google comes about a month after a class-action antitrust lawsuit was filed in California against Google, Apple and the chief executives of both companies, alleging violations of US antitrust laws.
The complaint, filed by The California Crane School, claimed that the tech firms came to an agreement that Google would pay Apple multiple billions of dollars each year to forego developing its own search engine to avoid competing with Google.
The lawsuit also alleged that Google shares its search profits with the iPhone maker, while Apple gives preferential treatment to Google on all Apple devices in return.