Google has faced a mounting wave of private damages claims across Europe after the European Commission fined the company €890 million for breaching the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Lawyers and litigation financiers told Reuters that claims already filed in half a dozen countries could ultimately be worth up to $10 billion (€8.8 billion).
The Commission fined Alphabet’s search unit €460 million on July 23 for favouring its own shopping, hotel, transport and sports services in search results. A second penalty of €430 million covered restrictions on app developers steering Google Play users towards cheaper offers elsewhere.
The decision was the first taken against Google under the DMA and the largest issued so far under the regulation. Google has 60 days to end both practices or face periodic penalties of up to 5 per cent of its worldwide turnover.
Most of the damages claims now before national courts predate that ruling. They follow on from the Commission’s 2017 Google Shopping decision, which found the company had abused a dominant position, leaving claimants only to quantify their losses.
Thomas Hoppner, a partner at Geradin Partners, which advised German price comparison site Idealo, said the fine would encourage more companies to sue. “I think this will trigger a new wave of litigation,” he said.
A Berlin court awarded Idealo €465 million in November, the largest antitrust damages award ever made by a German court.
UK comparison site Kelkoo, which is seeking billions of pounds from Google, said the decision would strengthen its claims because it showed the company was “still self-referencing even to this day”, according to chief executive Richard Stables.
Italy’s Moltiply Group, which runs the Trovaprezzi.it comparison site, is seeking €2.97 billion. Its chairman Marco Pescarmona called the DMA sound legislation but said regulators were “afraid to use it”.
Litigation funder LitFin is backing two groups suing Google in Amsterdam over its shopping auctions, seeking more than $1 billion (€878 million) combined. Chief operating officer Matej Pardo described the fines as “a cost of doing business”.
In Sweden, a Stockholm court in July ordered Google to pay roughly $1.97 billion (€1.73 billion) including interest to Klarna-backed PriceRunner, which filed its claim in 2022. Klarna counsel Pontus Scherp said an appeal was expected to take years.
Google rejected the claims, saying the companies behind them were “looking for a payout” instead of investing in their own products.
The litigation adds to €10.4 billion in EU-led fines imposed on the company over the past decade. Google lost a final appeal against a record €4.1 billion penalty over its Android operating system on July 2, and the Commission ordered it to share search data with rivals on July 16.
