After losing an appeal in the European Union over an antitrust lawsuit that saw Google hit with a record fine of $2.8 billion USD, the tech giant is now struck with another lawsuit against its anticompetitive behavior in the region.
The new filing is brought by Swedish price comparison website PriceRunner and claims that Google has abused its power through its “monopoly-like position” in Europe by favoring its own shopping services over other competitors, influencing consumers to pay higher prices and ultimately harming both. “We are … seeking compensation for the damage Google has caused us during many years, but are also seeing this lawsuit as a fight for consumers who have suffered tremendously from Google’s infringement of the competition law for the past fourteen years and still today,” says the company’s CEO Mikael Lindahl.
PriceRunner is now seeking $2.4 billion USD in damages from the tech giant, although it also says that “Since the violation is still ongoing the amount of damages increases every day, we expect the final damages amount of the lawsuit to be significantly higher.” Google has yet to respond publicly to the lawsuit, but it launched another appeal against the fine imposed by the EU earlier last month, arguing that “there are areas that require legal clarification from the European Court of Justice.”
Elsewhere in the tech industry, early Facebook investor Peter Thiel has stepped down from Meta’s board of directors.
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