Google’s involvement in several lawsuits across Europe begs the question of what is to come in the age of AI
A Swedish court ruling has revived debate over Google’s search practices after ordering the company to pay almost $2bn to Klarna-owned PriceRunner.
The judgment, worth $1.97bn including interest, originates from PriceRunner’s claim that Alphabet, parent company of Google, manipulated search results to favour its own comparison shopping service at the expense of rival platforms.
Klarna acquired PriceRunner in 2022, inheriting a lawsuit that originally sought €2.1bn ($2.4bn) in damages. Although the court awarded less than the full amount, the judgment is the largest competition damages award ever issued in Sweden and one of the most significant antitrust rulings involving the tech giant, with several more ongoing.
Google has rejected the allegations, saying it disagrees with the decision and is reviewing its legal options.
Klarna welcomed the ruling but acknowledged that any payment is unlikely to arrive soon, with an appeal expected to take several years.
What PriceRunner alleges
PriceRunner accused Google of self-preferencing, arguing the company distorted competition for more than a decade by giving preferential placement to its own comparison shopping service in search results.
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The claim expands on the 2017 European Commission decision, which found the tech firm had abused its market position by favouring its own shopping service over rival comparison platforms.
According to PriceRunner, changes to Google’s search rankings dramatically reduced the visibility of competing websites, with traffic falling in the UK from 2008 and in Sweden and Denmark from 2013.
The company argued that lower visibility led to fewer referrals, weaker commercial performance and slower revenue growth.
PriceRunner also emphasised that comparison websites play a vital role in the online shopping journey by directing consumers to merchants, making them a key source of customer acquisition for retailers and the payment providers that support them.
Google search under pressure
The firm’s search business is a gateway to online commerce, with changes to its algorithms capable of affecting the visibility and commercial performance of businesses across multiple sectors.
That influence has attracted increasing regulatory scrutiny in recent years. In 2024, a US federal judge ruled that Google had illegally maintained its search monopoly through exclusive agreements, including deals that made it the default search engine on devices such as Apple‘s iPhone.
The court found those agreements conflicted with US antitrust law, with Apple’s position in the smartphone market helping Google keep control of more than 90% of online searches.
The number of businesses owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, and the level of market control have led to wider competition concerns.
The PriceRunner case is also not an isolated challenge. Last year, a German court ordered Google to pay around €465m to comparison site Idealo and €107m to Producto, while similar claims are progressing in the UK from companies including Kelkoo and Foundem.
Google has faced little competition as the world’s leading search engine, but its position is beginning to come under pressure as more consumers use AI-powered tools such as ChatGPT to search for information and discover products.
Payments to be closer to Google
Google isn’t lying down in the new era of AI search and is looking to be embedded in the transaction layer through its push into agentic commerce and AI-driven payments.
Earlier this year, the company announced its Agentic Pay model, which aims to move users from search to checkout in a single flow, with AI agents capable of completing purchases at the point of intent.
The idea is that this brings payments into the search experience, where discovery, recommendation and execution are all found within the same interface.
Given Google’s numerous antitrust cases, it remains to be seen if the same competition concerns will arise.
