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July 1, 2026, 7:32 p.mJuly 1, 2026, 7:33 p.m
The tech giant Google is to pay the Klarna subsidiary Pricerunner the equivalent of almost 1.3 billion euros in damages. The Swedish competition court ordered the US company to do this.
The reason: Google has improperly favored its own price comparison site for many years. As a result, the company, which has been part of the Swedish payment service provider Klarna since 2022, suffered damage.
According to the TT news agency, the price comparison company Pricerunner originally demanded the equivalent of almost 7 billion euros. The damages now awarded are still the highest that have ever been awarded in a Swedish competition case, said judge Linda Kullberg, according to a statement.
Market dominance abused
According to the court, there is also interest amounting to the equivalent of around 419 million euros, which Google has to pay. This results in a total of more than 1.7 billion euros.
The legal dispute is related to a decision by the EU Commission in 2017. At that time, the Commission fined Google around two billion euros because the company had abused its market dominance in web searches to favor its own price comparison service. In its lawsuit, Pricerunner argued that this abuse continued until the end of 2023, according to TT. Google denied this. (sda/awp/dpa)