Report from Reuters
In Brief – Google has been sued by Ceneo, a Poland-based comparison-shopping unit of European ecommerce platform Allegro, seeking 2.33 billion zlotys (about $568 million) for damages suffered at the hands of the digital giant from 2013 through 2024. The civil lawsuit filed in the District Court in Warsaw builds on the determination of the European Commission that Google favored its own comparison-shopping service, Google Shopping, in Google search results, disadvantaging comparison-shopping competitors. In September, the EU’s top court upheld the €2.42B fine imposed on Google by the Commission for this anti-competitive conduct. Ceneo’s claims consist of 1.72 billion zlotys for losses sustained by the company from 2013 through 2024, as well as interest payments of around 615 million zlotys related to the unpaid compensation during those years. Google issued a statement in response to the lawsuit saying, “Our Shopping remedy has been working successfully for several years and we continue to invest in formats that support brands, retailers and comparison shopping sites of all sizes across Poland and Europe.”
Context – The charge the Google was unfairly preferencing its own specialized “vertical” search services for products and services such as airfares, lodging, local services, and jobs, and penalizing vertical search competitors in Google’s general search engine, was the basis of the EU’s Google “Shopping” antitrust case involving its price comparison service. The fact it took well over a decade to complete the case, and companies competing against Google’s verticals continued to complain throughout, was a major impetus for the Digital Markets Act regulating dominant digital “gatekeepers”. The Commission has held regular DMA stakeholder forums aimed at finding an acceptable result balancing the interests of verticals providers and direct sellers, let alone consumers and possibly even Google itself. Regulating Google Search is likely to be a long-term employment contract in the Commission, let alone regulating the other seven Google “core platform services” as well.