Klarna-Google Antitrust Verdict Set for July 1

Klarna notified its investors Wednesday (June 24) that a Swedish court has delayed for a third time its judgment in an antitrust case brought by Klarna subsidiary PriceRunner against Google.

The Patent and Market Court in Stockholm has rescheduled the publication of its judgment from Friday (June 26) to July 1, Klarna said in an investor update.

“As with the Court’s two previous notifications, the rescheduling is a procedural decision by the Court and relates solely to the timing of the judgment delivery,” the company said in the release. “In its notification, the Court cited high workload as the reason for needing additional time to finalize the judgment. No inference about the outcome should be drawn from it.”

Klarna said in an April 10 investor update that the court rescheduled the publication of its judgment from April 15 to June 10, and the company said in a June 3 investor update that the court rescheduled the publication from June 10 to June 26.

PYMNTS reported in April that the trial ran from Oct. 20 to Dec. 19, and that PriceRunner was seeking $8.3 billion in antitrust damages.

PriceRunner’s claim followed a 2017 European Commission decision that Google abused its dominance in online comparison shopping, and a 2024 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union that upheld that decision.

“PriceRunner alleges that Google systematically demoted competing price comparison services in its search results while favoring its own Google Shopping product, causing sustained and quantifiable commercial damage to PriceRunner over more than a decade,” Klarna said in a February press release.

In response to the lawsuit, a Google representative told AFP in October: “We strongly oppose this lawsuit and look forward to presenting our case in court.”

Google has maintained that it made substantial adjustments in 2017 to comply with EU requirements. The company said those changes have successfully broadened participation, with the number of price comparison sites using its platform increasing from seven at the time to 1,550 in October.

Parent company Alphabet said in a recent regulatory filing that it faces antitrust proceedings, private individual and collective actions in the U.S., across Europe and in other jurisdictions. The company said: “We believe we have strong arguments against these open claims and will defend ourselves vigorously.”