Nov 15, 2025 14:00:00

Google ordered to pay damages of over 100 billion yen, abusing its dominant position in the market and causing harm to price comparison sites

A German court has ordered Google to pay a total of 572 million euros (approximately 103 billion yen) in damages to price comparison sites for abusing its dominant market position.

Google must pay German price comparison platform 465 mln euros in damages, court says | Reuters

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/google-must-pay-german-price-comparison-platform-465-mln-euros-damages-court-2025-11-14/

German court rules Google must pay €572M for violating antitrust rules in price comparison sector | TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/14/german-court-rules-google-must-pay-e572m-for-violating-antitrust-rules-in-price-comparison-sector/

Google has offered its own shopping feature, Google Shopping (known as Froogle until 2010), since 2002. Google was sued in Germany for abusing its dominant market position by displaying Google Shopping content preferentially over other companies' price comparison sites on its search results pages.

In this case, a German court ruled that Google had abused its dominant market position and ordered it to pay 465 million euros (approximately 84 billion yen) in damages to price comparison site Idealo and 107 million euros (approximately 19 billion yen) to price comparison site Producto. Google can appeal this ruling.

Following the ruling, Idealo, a subsidiary of German multinational media company

Axel Springer SE , announced that it would continue its lawsuit against Google. Idealo co-founder Albrecht von Sonntag said, 'Market abuse must have consequences, and no business model can be profitable while being subject to fines and damages. That's why we will continue to fight.' Idealo is suing Google for market abuse, seeking €3.3 billion (approximately ¥593 billion) including interest.

Idealo's lawsuit against Google stems from a lawsuit filed by the European Court of Justice in which the company was fined 2,424,495,000 euros for favoring Google Shopping content over price comparison sites in search results pages.

The European Court of Justice upheld a 2017 order imposing a fine of more than 300 billion yen on Google for abusing its dominant market position and crushing rival shopping services.

Meanwhile, a Google spokesperson said the company would appeal the ruling.

Google also highlighted that in 2017 it changed the shopping unit (a box showing product images and prices) that appears on Google search results pages to an auction-style bidding system between Google Shopping and other online retailers.

A Google spokesperson defended the company, saying, 'Our 2017 update has worked well and there has been no intervention from the European Commission. The number of European price comparison sites using our shopping units has increased from seven sites at the time to 1,550 today.'

Google has recently been fined 2.95 billion euros (approximately 500 billion yen) by the European Commission, the EU's policy and executive body, for violating antitrust laws and for 'distorting competition in the advertising technology (ad tech) industry.'

Google hit with fine of over 500 billion yen from EU for violating antitrust law - GIGAZINE