Stockholm’s Patent and Market Courtroom ordered Google and its mum or dad Alphabet on July 1, 2026 to pay Klarna Applied sciences AB damages for diverting search site visitors away from the comparability buying service previously generally known as PriceRunner, ruling that the adjustments Google made in 2017 to fulfill a European Fee order by no means truly ended the abuse the Fee had condemned.
The judgment in Case PMT 1860-22 fixes the principal damages at 950,000,000 British kilos for the UK market, 675,000,000 Danish kroner for Denmark, and 1,142,000,000 SEK for Sweden. Google LLC and Google Sweden AB are collectively and severally chargeable for these sums, with Alphabet Inc. liable alongside them for hurt arising from October 2, 2015 onward, the date Alphabet turned the group’s mum or dad firm.
Accrued curiosity by means of October 31, 2025 provides considerably to the invoice. On the British portion alone, the courtroom set accrued curiosity at 316,226,468 kilos, bringing the pounds-denominated award to roughly 1.27 billion earlier than any additional curiosity accrues. The courtroom ordered persevering with curiosity on the Financial institution of England base charge plus two proportion factors on a part of the sum, and eight p.c annual curiosity from the date of judgment till fee.
A discovering that the 2017 treatment failed
The case activates a query that has shadowed European competitors enforcement for practically a decade: did Google’s response to the Fee’s 2017 choice genuinely cease the conduct, or merely rearrange it?
On June 27, 2017, the Fee adopted Choice C(2017) 4444 in Case AT.39740, concluding that Google had abused its dominant place usually search by selling its personal comparability buying service and demoting rivals. Google was given 90 days to finish the infringement or face penalty funds. It carried out what the events name the Modifications on September 28, 2017. Beneath that mechanism, competing comparability buying providers might bid for placement contained in the Purchasing Unit on the prime of the outcomes web page, and a hyperlink figuring out the service putting every advert appeared beneath it.
The Patent and Market Courtroom discovered this inadequate. In keeping with the judgment, the Purchasing Unit remained positioned and introduced in a outstanding and engaging method relative to competing providers, nonetheless grouped in a devoted field on the prime of the web page and nonetheless carrying product photos, whereas rival providers exterior that field continued to seem solely as odd blue hyperlinks topic to demotion by Google’s rating algorithms.
Central to that conclusion is the courtroom’s therapy of the Purchasing Unit itself. Google argued that the field didn’t represent its comparability buying service in any respect, and that giving rivals equal entry to bid inside it due to this fact happy the requirement of equal therapy. The courtroom rejected the argument. It held that the Purchasing Unit, because it functioned after the Modifications, was to be thought to be Google’s comparability buying service, so the beneficial placement of that field amounted to continued self-preferencing. For the interval from September 28, 2017 by means of December 31, 2023, the courtroom concluded, the particular conduct the Fee had condemned remained in place.
The algorithms that have been by no means modified
The judgment devotes shut consideration to 2 rating programs, Algorithm A and the Panda algorithm. In keeping with the ruling, Algorithm A was constructed by Google’s internet spam staff and launched in 2004, whereas Panda reached the UK on April 11, 2011 and Denmark and Sweden on August 12, 2011. Each have been designed to handle low-quality content material moderately than to focus on comparability websites. The courtroom accepted that Google didn’t create them to demote rivals.
Demotion was nonetheless the impact. The courtroom cited the Fee’s discovering, at recital 358 of the Choice, that each programs have a tendency by their inherent traits to downgrade comparability buying providers, which compile affords already revealed elsewhere and generate many related pages itemizing the identical merchandise. These are exactly the traits the algorithms penalise. Google confirmed that it didn’t considerably alter the rating algorithms to adjust to the Choice, emphasising that the Choice imposed no such obligation. The courtroom agreed no obligation existed, however famous that the identical freedom didn’t exempt the Purchasing Unit from the equal-treatment requirement.
Google additionally argued {that a} well-run website with related content material might nonetheless rank prominently amongst natural outcomes. The courtroom was unpersuaded, observing that it was unlikely practically each comparability service throughout the most important markets of the European Financial Space had concurrently turn into poorly managed in the intervening time Panda launched. PriceRunner, the judgment data, had been praised and cited as among the finest providers in its markets each earlier than and after the Modifications, and had adopted Google’s Webmaster Pointers, now known as Google Search Necessities. In the UK the corporate felt compelled to alter its area identify in 2018, which briefly improved visibility earlier than it declined once more.
How the site visitors loss was measured
Google’s dominance within the related markets was not critically unsure. Drawing on StatCounter knowledge submitted by PriceRunner, the courtroom discovered that from 2017 to 2023 Google’s search market share in Sweden by no means fell beneath 85 p.c on desktop and 98 p.c on cellular. The comparable Danish figures have been 89 and 98 p.c, and the British figures 82 and 96 p.c. A report from the UK competitors authority put Google’s share of 2019 search quantity at 93 p.c on desktop and 97 p.c on cellular.
To attach that dominance to misplaced income, the courtroom relied on proof about how customers behave on a outcomes web page. PriceRunner cited a 2019 research by the Nielsen Norman Group monitoring eye motion throughout search outcomes. In keeping with that research, 28 p.c of clicks on natural outcomes go to the primary consequence, 19 p.c to the second, and 12 p.c to the third, with the depend falling sharply thereafter. Visibility above the fold, the portion of the web page proven with out scrolling, carried related weight. The courtroom discovered consumer behaviour had not modified after the Choice, and that the sample matched what intuitively appeared doubtless: greater placement attracts extra consideration and extra clicks.
The mechanics of the Purchasing Unit bolstered the purpose. In keeping with testimony from Samuel Braendle cited within the judgment, the horizontal field might maintain as much as 40 product advertisements, and customers scrolled sideways inside it. After the Modifications, Google Purchasing operated within the affected markets by means of a unit described as Google Purchasing Europe, which bid in the identical public sale as different operators on phrases Google stated have been designed to maintain it self-sustaining by means of a set margin on every vendor’s bid.
Damages set by the courtroom, not the events
The scale of the award displays a hanging hole between what Klarna sought and what it acquired. PriceRunner’s major declare ran to 10,234,900,000 SEK, 8,878,800,000 Danish kroner, and three,171,900,000 British kilos in principal, earlier than curiosity. The courtroom granted damages amounting to roughly one-quarter of the entire claimed.
That discount adopted from how the courtroom dealt with the counterfactual. Each side submitted in depth financial modelling to estimate what PriceRunner would have earned absent the infringement, an train the Fee’s personal steering describes as inherently unsure, since no single true worth for the hurt will be established. The courtroom discovered neither aspect’s financial reviews totally persuasive and estimated the damages itself. It adopted an strategy evaluating PriceRunner’s site visitors improvement towards the expansion of the broader e-commerce sector, a technique the judgment attributes to the Berlin Regional Courtroom II within the idealo and Producto proceedings.
Two limits additional diminished the award. The courtroom held that a part of the British declare, overlaying hurt from January 1, 2008 by means of January 10, 2009, was barred by the statute of limitations beneath English legislation. It additionally declined to award compensation for residual hurt after December 31, 2023, discovering the proof didn’t show harm in that later interval given PriceRunner’s chosen mannequin and the procedural assumption that the infringement had ended on that date.
On mitigation, the courtroom sided with the plaintiff. Google had argued that PriceRunner ought to have restricted its losses by means of completely different search optimisation, larger funding, a modified enterprise focus, or participation within the compliance mechanism. The courtroom discovered Google had not proven that PriceRunner, by means of its personal fault, brought about the site visitors decline, and so declined to cut back the damages on that foundation.
Why the result was blended
The judgment is just not a clear victory for both get together. Klarna recovered a considerable sum and secured a discovering that Google’s post-2017 conduct remained illegal, a conclusion with implications reaching nicely past this dispute. But as a result of it prevailed on solely a few quarter of the quantity it claimed, the courtroom handled it as {a partially} unsuccessful get together for the aim of prices. Beneath Chapter 18 of the Swedish Code of Judicial Process, PriceRunner was ordered to reimburse half of Google’s cheap litigation prices, and individually to reimburse Google LLC 4,774,818 euros, 1,918,803 kilos, and 5,803,235 SEK in litigation prices, of which the majority pertains to attorneys’ charges.
The courtroom additionally addressed fault. Making use of the relaxed commonplace of intent or negligence that governs competitors damages, it discovered that Google ought to have understood the results its post-Modification conduct would have available on the market for comparability buying providers, and that the violation occurred no less than by means of negligence. The judgment notes that the Fee by no means issued formal discover that the Modifications complied with the Choice, that it repeatedly requested adjustments, and that it has since acted towards Google beneath the self-preferencing provisions of the Digital Markets Act.
For advertisers, publishers, and comparability platforms, the ruling issues much less for its forex whole than for what it establishes about treatment design. The EU Court of Justice upheld the original 2.4 billion euro Google Shopping fine on September 10, 2024, confirming the Fee’s discovering that Google had favoured its personal service. The Stockholm judgment goes a step additional by testing whether or not the repair Google in-built response truly labored, and concluding it didn’t.
That query sits on the centre of stay regulatory motion. In November 2024 Google launched greater than 20 modifications to its European search outcomes, and a coalition of over 20 comparison sites including PriceRunner argued those changes still failed to comply with the Digital Markets Act. Frustration with the tempo of enforcement grew till eighteen industry organisations wrote to the Commission president demanding a formal non-compliance decision on Google Search self-preferencing. The Fee has been weighing a record DMA fine tied to the same self-preferencing question, whilst Google proposed testing rival vertical search units inside its results to handle the Fee’s considerations.
The judgment additionally illustrates the rising weight of personal litigation working alongside public enforcement. In the USA, courts have cleared a path for publishers to pursue private damages against Google in ad tech cases as soon as legal responsibility has been established elsewhere. The Stockholm choice applies the identical logic in Europe: a Fee discovering of abuse, upheld by the Courtroom of Justice, turns into the inspiration for a claimant to quantify and get well its personal losses. For any enterprise depending on natural search site visitors, the case paperwork in uncommon element how placement, presentation, and rating algorithms translate into income, and the way a courtroom values that income when it’s diverted.
Timeline
- January 2008: Google Product Common launches in the UK, marking the beginning of the abuse interval there
- November 2013: The Purchasing Unit launches in Sweden and Denmark, marking the beginning of the abuse interval in these markets
- June 27, 2017: The European Fee adopts Choice C(2017) 4444, discovering Google abused its dominant place and fining it 2.4 billion euros
- September 28, 2017: Google implements the Modifications supposed to adjust to the Choice
- February 15, 2022: PriceRunner’s grievance is served on Google
- December 28, 2023: PriceRunner serves supplemental claims overlaying damages by means of December 31, 2023
- September 10, 2024: The Courtroom of Justice of the European Union upholds the two.4 billion euro positive
- October 31, 2025: Minimize-off date for accrued curiosity calculated within the judgment
- July 1, 2026: The Patent and Market Courtroom points its judgment in Case PMT 1860-22
Abstract
Who: The Stockholm Patent and Market Courtroom, ruling in favour of Klarna Applied sciences AB, previously PriceRunner Worldwide AB, towards Google LLC, Google Sweden AB, and mum or dad firm Alphabet Inc.
What: A damages judgment ordering Google and Alphabet to pay 950,000,000 British kilos, 675,000,000 Danish kroner, and 1,142,000,000 SEK in principal, plus curiosity that lifts the pounds-denominated determine above 1.26 billion, after the courtroom discovered that Google’s 2017 compliance measures by no means ended the search-traffic abuse the European Fee had condemned. The award represents roughly one-quarter of the quantity claimed.
When: The judgment was issued on July 1, 2026, overlaying hurt from January 2008 in the UK and November 2013 in Sweden and Denmark by means of December 31, 2023.
The place: The Patent and Market Courtroom in Stockholm, making use of Swedish, English, and EU competitors legislation throughout the UK, Danish, and Swedish markets.
Why: The courtroom held that the Purchasing Unit remained Google’s personal comparability buying service after the 2017 Modifications, that rating algorithms together with Panda continued to demote competing providers, and that this diverted site visitors and income from PriceRunner, establishing negligent conduct for which Google is liable in damages.
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