A Swedish court has ordered Google to pay 14.3 billion kronor (€1.3 billion) to PriceRunner, the price comparison platform owned by fintech group Klarna, for abusing its search dominance to promote its own shopping service. The Patent and Market Court in Stockholm found that Google’s self-preferencing caused “damage” to PriceRunner over a period of up to fifteen years in the United Kingdom and a decade in Sweden and Denmark. The damages, though substantial, fell far short of the 64 billion kronor plus interest originally sought by the claimant.

Google said it disagreed with the decision and was reviewing its legal options, maintaining that changes made to its shopping ads in 2017 had resolved the infringement. PriceRunner, which filed the lawsuit in 2022 after being acquired by Klarna, argued that the abuse continued well beyond 2017 and that Google’s adjustments were “mostly cosmetic,” according to its legal representative. The court partially accepted that argument, ruling that the violation persisted longer than Google had claimed, but it also deemed part of the claim time-barred and declined to award compensation for ongoing harm after the abuse ceased.

The judgment is the latest in a series of European antitrust actions against the US technology giant. In 2017, the European Commission fined Google €2.42 billion for illegally favouring its own comparison shopping service, a decision upheld by the EU’s General Court in 2021 and the Court of Justice in 2024. Brussels has since imposed further penalties, including a €2.95 billion fine in September 2025 for anti-competitive practices in digital advertising. Viewed from Stockholm, the ruling reinforces a pattern in which national courts are now translating those EU-level findings into private damages awards, with judge Linda Kullberg noting the sum was “undoubtedly the largest ever ordered in a Swedish competition case.”

Klarna’s head of communications, Dan Greaves, said the outcome “supports a healthier, more competitive market for the way people compare products and services.” The company, which has expanded PriceRunner’s database to cover over 100 million products, is using the ruling to bolster its public positioning as it reports strong revenue growth. Google faces a widening global antitrust landscape: in the United States, it has already paid $700 million to settle state-level claims over its app store practices, and EU regulators have threatened sanctions that could include a ban on operating in the bloc. The Swedish court’s decision is subject to appeal, and Google is expected to challenge the quantum and the finding that the infringement continued after 2017.