Google ordered to pay $13.5 billion in Swedish antitrust ruling over shopping search bias

A Stockholm court handed down one of the largest antitrust judgments against Google on Wednesday, ordering the company to pay 143 billion Swedish kronor — roughly $13.5 billion — to PriceRunner, a price comparison platform owned by the buy-now-pay-later giant Klarna.

The Stockholm Patent and Market Court found that Google had systematically manipulated its search results to favor its own price comparison service, violating EU competition law and damaging PriceRunner’s business over several years.

“Google has for many years illegally favored its own price comparison service,” the court said in a statement. PriceRunner, the court concluded, “suffered damages as a result.”

PriceRunner initially filed the lawsuit in 2022, seeking approximately 21 billion euros. Klarna, the Swedish fintech company best known for its installment payment service, acquired PriceRunner earlier that same year. PriceRunner was founded in 1999 as a price comparison and shopping search engine, while Klarna launched in 2005 and has grown into one of the world’s largest buy-now-pay-later providers.

A Google spokesperson said the company disagrees with the ruling and is considering its legal options. “We do not agree with the court’s decision and will consider legal avenues to defend ourselves,” the spokesperson said.

The case echoes the European Commission’s 2017 antitrust decision against Google, which fined the company 2.4 billion euros for similar abuses in its shopping search results. That ruling, which Google fought for years, was ultimately upheld by the EU’s top court in 2024. Unlike that EU-level fine, the Swedish ruling addresses compensation for specific damages incurred by a competitor.

The verdict arrives as regulators worldwide intensify scrutiny of Google’s dominance across search, advertising, and app store markets. The company faces multiple antitrust cases in the US, EU, and individual member states, with total potential liabilities now running into the tens of billions of dollars.

PriceRunner has not yet commented on whether it expects the payment to be made before any potential appeal is resolved.