A Swedish court has ordered Google to pay the domestic Fintech corporations "Klarna" (Klarna) $1.97 billion, including interest, in damages (about 3.06 trillion won).
According to the Financial Times (FT) on the 1st local time, the Stockholm Patent and Market Court reported that it ruled this way, saying, "Google illegally favored its own price comparison service for years, causing damage to PriceRunner, a subsidiary of Klarna." This is the largest damages award in Sweden's antitrust litigation history.
Klarna filed a lawsuit seeking $8 billion in damages, saying that from 2008 to 2023 in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Denmark, Google displayed its own price comparison service more favorably than PriceRunner on search results pages, causing major losses.
Klarna said it welcomed the ruling, even though the amount awarded was far less than it initially sought. Klarna said, "This ruling supports a healthier and more competitive market in the way consumers compare products and services, which benefits all shoppers."
Google was hit with a €2.42 billion (about 4.3 trillion won) penalty surcharge by the European Union (EU) executive branch in 2017 for favoring its own shopping service by abusing its search dominance. PriceRunner argued that even after the EU executive branch imposed the penalty surcharge, Google continued until 2023 to make its own price comparison service more prominent than competitors in its search engine.
Google, on the other hand, signaled the possibility of an appeal, saying, "We do not agree with the court's decision and will review legal options." Google countered, "Since the EU decision in 2017, we have improved the shopping ads system and achieved successful results, and hundreds of price comparison services operating more than 1,500 websites across Europe are growing alongside."
Klarna has developed and provided a shopping app that offers customers short-term interest-free loans. To increase institutional sector traffic, it acquired PriceRunner in 2022. Following the ruling, Klarna's share price rose 10% in after-hours transaction.