(Bloomberg) — Alphabet Inc.’s Google is being sued by Nordic price comparison provider PriceRunner AB for about 22 billion kronor ($2.4 billion) at Stockholm’s patent and market court.
The lawsuit follows the conclusion of a legal ruling in the European Union that established Google has breached antitrust laws by manipulating search results in favor of its own comparison-shopping services, PriceRunner said in an emailed statement Monday.
“This is also a matter of survival for many European entrepreneurial companies and job opportunities within tech,” said Mikael Lindahl, chief executive officer of PriceRunner.
Google spokesperson Emily Clarke told Bloomberg that the company is looking forward to defending its case in court.
“PriceRunner chose not to use shopping ads on Google, so may not have seen the same successes that others have,” Clarke said in emailed comments.
Stockholm-based PriceRunner, which has agreed to be bought by Klarna Bank AB, expects that the final damages of the lawsuit will be “significantly higher” because the violation is still ongoing, according to the statement.
Last month, the U.S. tech giant said it had filed a challenge against the ruling at the EU Court of Justice “because we feel there are areas that require legal clarification” from the bloc’s top judges.
(Adds comment from Google from fourth paragraph)
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