A Stockholm court put Google's Shopping bill at 14.3 billion kronor and found the abuse ran past 2017

The Patent and Market Court at Stockholm District Court gave judgment on 1 July 2026 in case PMT 1860-22, ordering Google to pay the price comparison site PriceRunner damages of about 14.3 billion Swedish kronor. The court's own release breaks the award into 1.025 billion Swedish kronor, 675 million Danish kroner and 950 million pounds, with accrued interest of roughly 400 million kronor, 250 million Danish kroner and 300 million pounds. Judge Linda Kullberg, quoted in the release, said that although PriceRunner had not been entirely successful in its claim, the damages awarded are undoubtedly the largest ever ordered in a Swedish competition case.

The most consequential finding is not the size of the cheque. It is the calendar. According to the court's release, Google's position was that the abuse ceased in September 2017, after it changed how shopping ads appear in response to the European Commission's decision that June. The court did not accept that. It found the abuse began in January 2008 in the United Kingdom and November 2013 in Sweden and Denmark, and awarded compensation covering roughly 15 years in the United Kingdom and just over 10 years in Sweden and Denmark, running into late 2023. Google's position that its 2017 remedy fixed the market is, on this court's reading of the evidence, wrong.

The court also cut the claim heavily. Here the record disagrees with itself. The court's release describes PriceRunner as having sought roughly 64 billion kronor plus about 14 billion in accrued interest. Euronews, reporting the same judgment on 1 July 2026 under the byline of Quirino Mealha, put the claim at about 80 billion kronor, or 7.2 billion euros, and characterised the outcome as the court dismissing roughly 82 per cent of it. Both figures are in the public record and this masthead has not been able to reconcile them.

PriceRunner is owned by Klarna, which issued its own statement the same day describing the award as 1.97 billion United States dollars including accrued interest. That is a company characterisation of a court outcome, and Klarna attached deductions to it: any sum is subject to appeal by Google, and what Klarna eventually keeps will be reduced by sharing arrangements with former PriceRunner shareholders, by payments to Klarna's litigation funder, and by tax. Klarna's own statement says the claim value should not be taken as an indication of any likely recovery. Klarna's head of communications and policy, Dan Greaves, framed the result as being about market health rather than the money, saying that when markets work well everyone benefits. Euronews reported Klarna shares rose 11.5 per cent in pre market trading. Google's policy communications manager for Europe, Mathilde Mechin, said the company did not agree with the decision and would review and consider its legal options, and defended the 2017 shopping ads changes as generating growth and jobs for hundreds of comparison shopping services.

The widely repeated framing of this judgment is that it is the first time a national court has turned the Commission's 2017 Google Shopping decision into money. That is not accurate. Euronews reported on 28 July 2026 that a Berlin court awarded Idealo about 465 million euros in November 2025 against a claim of 3.3 billion euros, and that Producto GmbH, which operates Testberichte.de, was awarded around 107 million euros against a 290 million euro claim in the same German case. Further claims are live: 7Pixel, operator of Trovaprezzi.it and part of the Moltiply group, filed a claim of about 2.97 billion euros in Italy in May 2025. TelecomLead reported on 28 July 2026 that Kelkoo is also pursuing compensation in the United Kingdom without publicly disclosing the value of its claim, and that lawyers and litigation funders put the combined value of current and future claims at up to 10 billion dollars. The Stockholm award is the largest of these to date, and its finding on duration is the novel part, not the fact of a damages award.

The underlying liability was settled elsewhere. The European Commission fined Google 2.42 billion euros on 27 June 2017 for favouring its own comparison shopping service, a decision covering 12 countries: Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Czechia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Poland and Sweden. The General Court, sitting as the Ninth Chamber in extended composition, largely dismissed Google's action on 10 November 2021 in Case T-612/17, annulling part of the decision but leaving the comparison shopping finding and the fine standing. The Court of Justice dismissed the final appeal in September 2024. Follow on damages claimants therefore do not have to prove the abuse, only their loss.

What is unresolved is whether 14.3 billion kronor survives. The judgment is open to appeal, and Klarna's own statement assumes that it will be tested. It is also not yet clear whether the Stockholm finding on duration will be adopted by courts in Germany, Italy or the United Kingdom, which would extend the compensable period for every other claimant. Neither the court release nor Klarna states what proportion of any final sum Klarna would actually retain.