Judge Linda Kullberg stated that the issue is ‘without a doubt the largest claim that has been ordered in a Swedish competition case’.
In a dispute regarding an abuse of power in the market for comparison shopping services, search-engine giant Google has been ordered by a Swedish court to pay almost $2bn in damages to PriceRunner, the price comparison business owned by payment platform Klarna.
On Wednesday, the Patent and Market Court in Stockholm, with presiding judge Linda Kullberg, awarded compensation for lost revenue caused by Google’s perceived preferential treatment of its own comparison-shopping service over competing services.
Kullberg did however, dismiss further claims wherein Pricerunner asked for an additional $8.2bn. Despite this, Kullberg said the issue is still “without a doubt the largest claim that has been ordered in a Swedish competition case”.
Google is in a position to appeal the ruling and have stated that they are not in agreement with the court’s findings.
