Report from Reuters
In Brief – European lawyers and litigation financiers say that the European Commission’s recent decision to fine Google $1 billion for violating the Digital Markets Act (DMA) may add to the wave of private antitrust lawsuits that the search giant faces in Europe. The EU regulator found that Google violated the new digital competition law by favoring its own vertical search services. That charge parallels the 2017 finding in the European Commission’s first Google antitrust case, called Google Shopping, in which the digital giant abused its dominance in online search by giving advantages to its own comparison-shopping service while penalizing competitors. In the years since the 2017 ruling, dozens of online comparison-shopping sites have looked to build on the Shopping decision with private damages lawsuits in national courts. A Swedish court recently awarded comparison-shopping site PriceRunner €1.7 billion in damages. Google denies the allegations of the vertical search competitors, arguing rivals are seeking payouts instead of improving their products.
Context – Google’s string of losses in antitrust cases is leading to “follow-on” civil antitrust lawsuits from plaintiffs looking to win damage awards, and those company awards may end up exceeding Google’s initial penalties. While the follow-on damages lawsuits from European shopping sites have been underway for years, the latest DMA ruling could entice a more varied group of specialized vertical search firms to pursue private lawsuits, as well as expand the years cited in damages claims. In the US, Yelp is a vertical service trying to build on Judge Amit Mehta’s 2024 ruling that Google search is a monopoly under US antitrust law. Google’s losses in AdTech antitrust cases are creating a similar situation. A French court ordered Google to pay 126 million euros to several media groups for AdTech practices penalized by the Commission, while Index Exchange is an AdTech firm suing Google in US court to win damages based on US District Judge Leonie Brinkema’s April 2025 ruling that Google has an AdTech monopoly in the US.