London: Swedish price comparison platform PriceRunner on Monday sued Google in Europe, seeking 2.1 billion euros ($2.4 billion) in damages.
The lawsuit has accused the tech giant of “continuing to breach a 2017 European Commission antitrust enforcement order against Google Shopping,” reports TechCrunch.
The lawsuit also alleges that Google continued to violate competition law in relation to product search, as well as seeking compensation for historical infringements that have allowed Google to reap revenue at rivals’ expense.
“It is causing consumers to overpay enormous amounts of money every year because Google is not showing the most relevant results and with too high prices when they could show better results further up,” PriceRunner CEO Mikael Lindahl was quoted as saying.
PriceRunner also estimated that European consumers are overpaying billions per year as a result of Google’s search engine returning links to products that are more expensive than equivalents offered via (non-Google) price comparison services.
Google in November lost an appeal against a 2.42 billion-euro fine it received in 2017 which found using its own price comparison shopping service gave the company an unfair advantage over smaller European rivals.
