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Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages
- raychis 4mo ago$1.5B is significant, but the bigger question is whether this actually changes how dominant platforms rank their own services. Is this real accountability for anti-competitive behaviour, or just another cost of doing business for Big Tech? My cynicism is tell me that unfortunately it is the latter.
- DANmode 4mo agoVouched, I feel similarly. (I can’t possibly understand this being downvoted. The downvote button isn’t an “I disagree” button.)
- orphea 4mo agoPerhaps because the comment didn't add to the discussion? like all those +1 comments in GitHub issues.
- DANmode 4mo agoThe comment was the discussion; it was the only comment, and killed.
- dgellow 4mo agoFrom HN guidelines: > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. and yes, downvoting is a perfectly fine disagree button, what else do you think it is
- DANmode 4mo agoIt makes boring reading because the discussion, for those who have cared about it in the past, remains the same. Anyway, downvote = “This doesn’t belong here.” or “This doesn’t attempt to contribute to the discussion.” If everyone here downvoted each time they disagreed, there would be few comments alive…and little discussion. The reply button is the disagree button. Otherwise, for comments of any length, it isn’t even clear what’s being disagreed with!
- dgellow 4mo ago> If everyone here downvoted each time they disagreed That’s what they do. It’s how HN works. I’m pretty sure pg said that a while ago. You can write a reply if you want to engage, you don’t have to. You can downvote or not if you disagree, that’s up to you. Edit: found it, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 Edit 2: that comment is almost 20y old! Fuck I’m becoming old
- DANmode 4mo ago> That’s what they do That’s what you do. > You can write a reply if you want to engage, you don’t have to. Downvoting is engaging - in my opinion, just incompletely - if nobody else has replied yet enumerating your dissenting viewpoint.
- dgellow 4mo agoI’ve been on HN since a very long time, I can assure you it’s not a me thing. Anyway, given pg‘s comment the topic is pretty much settled
- DANmode 4mo agoThat’s a lame appeal to authority. Here’s mine (the reply to the pg comment - their account is older than yours, if that matters): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117237
- bevekspldnw 4mo agoAbsolute numbers with BigTech are never significant. Only viable paths for remedy anre outright divestment or revoking financial license in Sweden. The former is nigh impossible, the latter is fairly trivial with sufficient will.
- brainwad 4mo agoIMO the fines do have an effect - Google now withholds a lot of launches from the EU, sometimes temporarily until they have time to have lawyers check them against DMA requirements, but mostly permanently. Ironically the part of Google most likely to persist in launching for the EU is Ads, since money is at stake. All the free, consumer-benefiting services are most likely to be curtailed in the face of aggressive regulation.
- teddyh 4mo agoYou say that like it’s a bad thing.
- soco 4mo agoYay for European sovereign services! A bit through the backdoor, or as a side-effect if you want, but the result is the same. Or could be the same, if it continues like that.
- surgical_fire 4mo ago> All the free, consumer-benefiting services Those are just more avenues for Google to collect data to shove ads down everyone's throats. Good that regulations keeps Google from releasing more pf their shit here. Governments should really tighten the screws there.
- gowld 4mo agoThe ads are getting shoved regardless. The content of the ads are based on personalization data.
- cryptonym 4mo ago> All the free, consumer-benefiting services If they stop providing value to users, they are putting their ad business at risk. It's never free, providing value to share holders is a top priority.
- brainwad 4mo agoThere are also all the free services that just build goodwill. Those are the most at risk. Of course the "ad carriers" are treated better, since again money is on the line. But any non-essential. feature thereof is also potentially killable.
- thisislife2 4mo agoThey do treat it as a "cost of doing business" as they do hedge between making a bigger profit through such violations vis the possible fine. But enforced fines like these serve as a warning that the government / regulator / judiciary are serious about enforcing laws and upholding rights. That precedent does discourages such actions because they know future violations will invite similar actions (the punitive fines may be worse for repeat violations) thus making the risks higher. The counter to that is political lobbying, if it is cheaper than the fines, and is also treated as another "cost of doing business". (Even India has fined them 100s of millions of dollars - https://ssrana.in/articles/google-fined-anti-competitive-practices-nclat/ https://ssrana.in/articles/google-fined-anti-competitive-pra... ).
- yieldcrv 4mo agoIt was about behavior 9 years ago Internet wont be human steered by the time this is over Just agents running x402 payments over mcp servers
- jeltz 4mo agoIt is not like you typically can just ignore a court order so Google will need to convince Klarna that they have changed something or Klarna can just go back to the court.
- _el1s7 4mo ago> PriceRunner is considered to have suffered damage as a result of Google having illegally favoured its price comparison service for many years Why would Google NOT favor it's own service at it's own product? How is that illegal?
- bevekspldnw 4mo agoWhy would Swedish courts NOT favor their own national economic interests? How is that illegal?
- carlosjobim 4mo agoWell if the Swedish courts stomp on Google in the name of national interest, maybe the US will stomp on Sweden in the name of national interest. Now consider where Klarna gets the most of their money from.
- piva00 4mo agoSo no country can ever take action and enforce their local laws because the USA can retaliate? Why have local laws in that case? Better we all just adopt American laws to not have to fear the Americans getting pissy when they diverge...
- esme388 4mo agoI know you you're being sarcastic but a lot of people probably think that's perfectly ok and is the way everything should be...
- carlosjobim 4mo agoI replied to a comment arguing that courts should pass judgements according to what is in the national economic interest. That would mean courts following other guidelines than the law. Protectionism works both ways - as it should. So if Sweden disadvantages American companies in the name of protecting domestic companies like Klarna, then it's completely expected that the US will do the same thing against Swedish companies to protect their domestic companies.
- buggeryorkshire 4mo agoDidn't Google have a previous lawsuit against foundem? Not a fan of Google but foundem were fucking awful.
- LtWorf 4mo agoNot like klarna are nice
- Freak_NL 4mo agoQuite. At least Google delivers some value to society, despite being mostly evil. Klarna is exclusively parasitic, getting people needlessly into debt and pushing a buy now pay later mentality for luxury products.
- lokar 4mo agoAnd burritos
- LtWorf 4mo agoA local pizza place here in sweden puts leaflet in my mailbox and yes you can order pizza and pay with klarna
- basisword 4mo agoThere are helpful use cases that aren't parasitic. I use it if I want to buy a bunch of clothes in multiple sizes. I return what I don't need and don't need to splurge up front. The people who get into debt for unnecessary stuff they can't afford will find other ways anyway.
- tuwtuwtuwtuw 4mo agoI wouldn't say Klarna is exclusively parasitic. Where I am located, Klarna is often the absolutely best choice for payments, and I always pay up front.
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- Hikikomori 4mo agoThis comes years after this fine was upheld about Google shopping in an EU court. I guess prisjakt (another Swedish website that works just like pricerunner) could do the same now. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/27/google-braces-for-record-breaking-1bn-fine-from-eu https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/27/google-brac... Klarna bought pricerunner for just under a billion 5 years ago, pretty good deal.
- vilhelm_s 4mo agoThis decision is a direct consequence of the EU decision, Pricerunner applied the precedent from that case and claimed that Google discriminated against them in the same way. (https://www.delphi.se/eu-competition-blog/private-enforcement-in-sweden-recent-developments/ https://www.delphi.se/eu-competition-blog/private-enforcemen..., https://www.domstol.se/nyheter/2026/07/google-is-to-pay-damages-to-pricerunner/ https://www.domstol.se/nyheter/2026/07/google-is-to-pay-dama...)
- zelias 4mo agoWondering if Google can take out a BNPL plan to cover the damages
- newaccount670 4mo agoThis is effectively just a tariff. An extremely large and disproportionate fine on a foreign company so that the local company has a better chance to compete.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- WarmWash 4mo agoPeople aren't going to like this, but taking a page from Apple, Microsoft, Sony (iPhone, Xbox, Playstation), the solution to constant antitrust charges stemming from competitors on your platform....is to kick them off the platform. You can't be anti-competitive if you have no competitors.
- victorbjorklund 4mo agoPretty sure Google would loose its search business if Google search only contained websites owned by Google.
- sigmoid10 4mo agoBecause of the introduction of AI overview, click-through rates are dropping like crazy. Up to 70% of Google searches now end without any clicks to third party websites. So most search users already stay completely within Google's ecosystem.
- fsuts 4mo agoBut does that apply to shopping? I have often had a look at Google shopping results but very rarely clicked one. I think when searching for an answer ai assist is often sufficient but not for where you are buying?
- giancarlostoro 4mo ago> I have often had a look at Google shopping results but very rarely clicked one. Pretty sure that tab is all ads, so its all garbage, in some cases some of the results look like scams.
- dmurray 4mo agoIt worked great for me recently buying running shoes. I knew what shoes I wanted, there are plenty of no-name merchants selling them, competing on price (last year's model, so not being sold in big name stores). Click through each of them, find one with the right size, colour, delivery prices. Very painless. If some of the merchants are scams, I wouldn't know, my shoes arrived anyway. Instead of "all ads, so it's all garbage" this is exactly what I wish all advertising could be.
- tjwebbnorfolk 4mo agoKlarna is a buy-now-pay-later company, right? How do they compete with google?
- Hikikomori 4mo agoThey bought the website pricerunner.com which aggregates prices from webshops, like google shopping.
- sigmoid10 4mo agoThis case was about PriceRunner, a price comparison platform that was suffering from Google prioritizing its own platform in search results. Klarna just happens to be the owner.
- thesdev 4mo agoThis case is about a subsidiary of them called Pricerunner, which is a price-comparison platform. https://www.pricerunner.se https://www.pricerunner.se
- dehrmann 4mo agoI used to work for a Pricerunner competitor. Not Nextag, but they were the most well-known in the US. They're called "comparison shopping engines," and most were names people would barely remember. These companies got steamrolled by Google because their service wasn't very good. It's all an affiliate marketing play, where they get traffic for keywords through Google organic search (these sides made heavy use of SEO) and Adwords. When you land on the site, everything is an ad, either a merchant product link the merchant pays per click for or less commonly, an affiliate link. Result ranking is tuned between revenue and relevancy. The problems are it's not really a comparison as much as search results, you're clicking in from a Google SERP to another list of search results, and the results used factors other than relevancy, and the side was designed to encourage click-outs.
- akersten 4mo agoSo what is the resolution supposed to be? Randomize the results whenever a user searches for a vague product category that is also something that Google provides? The article is pretty light on detail about what "favoring their own service" actually meant. Just that it appeared above Klarna's when a user searched BNPL? It all seems vague and hard to cure. The algorithm is typically very good at surfacing the least shitty option, so if the resolution is "well you have to jumble them now" that's strictly worse for me as a consumer.
- thesdev 4mo agoI'd imagine this is about the presence of the google shopping bar you get above the results, like this: https://imgur.com/a/1drEnrm https://imgur.com/a/1drEnrm
- everforward 4mo agoIt seems hard to cure because a lot of this is stuff that just probably shouldn’t be done. Ie the structure of the products veers so close to anti-competitive practices that it’s just untenable in the face of regulatory enforcement. Google runs the dominant search engine, which they control the rankings of and sells ads on, while also competing against companies that buy ads from them and fight to maintain a spot on the index is almost immediately suspicious. The potential for abuse is incredibly high, and at one point would probably have been concerning enough to invoke regulators without even acting on the potential for misconduct. It’s like taking the babysitter out to a fancy dinner alone. It could be something totally normal, but it looks bad enough that you probably wouldn’t do it. The real answer is that Google would probably need to sell off that arm. There is no configuration where Google retains the control or benefits of the Shopping product without being locked in conflicts of interest around the index. It’s always going to look like the way Standard Oil was setup, because it is set up the way Standard Oil was. They own infrastructure, and they compete upstream against other companies forced to use that infrastructure. There’s no way to resolve that conflict of interest.
- thayne 4mo agoI think the ideal solution is to split up google. And google shouldn't give any special treatment to their own products when ranking search results. That said, a price comparison tool is essentially a specialized search engine, and it makes a lot of sense to gather price comparison information while indexing for search, and I don't think having price comparison built in to a search engine is necessarily a bad thing. Although, I'm a little distrustful of google shopping results.
- exabrial 4mo agoThe problem is Google/Apple and these people that self-identify as platforms" should probably divest from providing any 1st party services on their "platforms".
- SllX 4mo agoNo. Platforms are better when the owners of them continue to invest directly in & improve the user experience. Turning them into white label runtimes for apps is something only nerds & bureaucrats with visions of grandeur dream of.
- Danox 4mo agoWhat Europe needs to do is actually compete. China appears to be successfully competing so much so in certain areas the United States had to ban certain things. There is no reason why there can’t be a search engine or any other major service or hardware system originating from Europe other than all the red tape, the EU puts in the way they kill small companies before they even get a chance to get bigger You can’t come up with a new idea and monetize it if you have to make it open to everyone from the start. Arm processors, for example, originated in the EU, the EU, or I should say Europe, has Linux, and there have been other pioneering forms of technology and software and hardware over the years, but the environment in the EU kills off small companies. You can’t share everything at the beginning of a company’s life. I’m still waiting for Linux on the desktop, Linux running on Arm computers sold by a company with both hardware and software working together as one in a user-friendly manner to the average person, you go to a store or you go online, you buy it, you take it home, you use it. On day one, within the first ten minutes of plugging it in, there really is no excuse. After thirty-five years, of not having something workable for the average person to use, and there again, I don’t mean what is currently out there which is nothing, And no, it’s not Apple’s responsibility or Nvidia or AMD to make that happen where is that new European start-up up? Forcing companies of any size to give free infrastructure rides isn’t the way to compete in any industry.
- watwut 4mo agoThe actual reason for China success is a lot more red tape, whenever an American or European company wants in. Oftentimes, allowing them in only if they give up trade secrets and technologies. To be like China, EU needs to go harder against American companies and then use it as a bargaining chip. Also, Europe does not have Linux. It does not own it and linux is not exclusive to Europe.
- bjourne 4mo agoThis is one of the Price Runner sites: https://www.pricerunner.com/ https://www.pricerunner.com/ And this is Google Shopping: https://www.google.com/search?q=laptops&sca_esv=a6fae943e924d981&udm=28&sxsrf=APpeQns6_hBi9NUPO02Elgb-tYFLbQujyw%3A1782918979134&source=hp&ei=Qy9FarutBer7wPAPjqa-qQk&iflsig=ABILxe8AAAAAakU9U47EJqpS49el4nicH2E23iUuKKJ5 https://www.google.com/search?q=laptops&sca_esv=a6fae943e924... Google gave its own price comparison service favorable treatment in search results, thereby abusing their dominance in the search market: "Google has systematically given prominent placement to its own comparison shopping service: when a consumer enters a query into the Google search engine in relation to which Google's comparison shopping service wants to show results, these are displayed at or near the top of the search results. Google has demoted rival comparison shopping services in its search results: rival comparison shopping services appear in Google's search results on the basis of Google's generic search algorithms. Google has included a number of criteria in these algorithms, as a result of which rival comparison shopping services are demoted. Evidence shows that even the most highly ranked rival service appears on average only on page four of Google's search results, and others appear even further down. Google's own comparison shopping service is not subject to Google's generic search algorithms, including such demotions. As a result, Google's comparison shopping service is much more visible to consumers in Google's search results, whilst rival comparison shopping services are much less visible." https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_17_1784 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_17_... It is similar to Microsoft's anti-competitive business practices of the 1990's. There is no legal uncertainty at all -- Google must have know that its conduct was illegal and deserve to pay hundreds of billions in punitive damages.
- silexia 4mo ago[flagged]