The world’s Internet giant Google will be subject to antitrust litigation in Europe again!
According to foreign media news on February 7, pricerunner, an e-commerce price comparison platform from Sweden, said it had sued Google in the local court in Stockholm for huge compensation of 2.1 billion euros (about 15.3 billion yuan). The company said that Google violated antitrust law by manipulating search results to provide information for its comparative shopping service.
In addition, pricerunner also said that it was ready to fight a “long war” and expected that the final damages of the lawsuit would be “much higher” because Google’s violations were still ongoing. It is reported that the lawsuit aims to make Google pay compensation for the lost profits of pricerunner in the UK since 2008 and in Sweden and Denmark since 2013.
Google said it would defend the lawsuit. “The adjustments we made for shopping advertising in 2017 made our [shopping advertisers] very successful,” said a Google spokesman. “If [but] pricerunner chooses not to use our service to advertise, they don’t necessarily see the success of other companies.”
has been heavily fined in Europe for antitrust
This is not the first time the Internet giant has been sued in Europe for antitrust. As early as November 10 last year, Google lost a four-year antitrust lawsuit and was fined 2.42 billion euros (17.9 billion yuan) by the European general court.
The EU General Court of Justice said at the time that there was enough evidence that Google’s behavior in this regard was harmful. The court also said that Google “has violated the antitrust law by preferring its own comparison shopping services on its general results pages through more favorable display and positioning, and degrading the results of competitive comparison services on these pages through the ranking algorithm.”
Despite the huge fines, pricerunner CEO Mikael Lindahl said in an interview that Google had been “abusing” its power to manipulate the market from beginning to end and “had not made any substantive changes.” In addition, he said, “this is about the survival of many European start-ups, as well as employment opportunities in the technology industry.”
According to the reporter of fund daily, in the past 10 years, Google has been subject to three antitrust lawsuits within the EU alone, and “ate” fines of more than 8 billion euros (about 60 billion yuan), and was forced to make certain changes in its business
(source: compiled by the reporter of fund daily)
In addition to the above-mentioned case of the European Court of justice, the other two antitrust cases were the European Commission v. Google’s “abuse of Android operating system” in July 2018, with a fine of 4.34 billion euros (about 32.1 billion yuan); And in March 2019, the European Commission sued Google’s online advertising business for violating EU competition rules and fined nearly US $1.5 billion (about 10 billion yuan). Although Google and its parent company, alphabet, appealed against these charges, they were still sentenced to a fine.
the fourth quarter financial report of the parent company comprehensively exceeded expectations
The share price soared after announced a 20-to-1 share split
After the closing of US stocks on February 1, Eastern time, digital advertising, search giant and Google parent company alphabet released the fourth quarter financial report of fiscal year 2021.
According to the financial report, the revenue of alphabet in the fourth quarter of last year was US $75.33 billion, up 32%; EPS per share increased by nearly 38% in the quarter; The operating profit in the quarter was close to US $21.9 billion, an increase of nearly 40%; The revenue of cloud business in the fourth quarter was US $5.54 billion, an increase of nearly 45%, and the operating loss narrowed by 30% year-on-year, both exceeding expectations
(source: Alphabet 2021 Q4 financial report)
According to market analysis, alphabet financial report shows that the company has withstood the impact of the epidemic.
In addition, Google’s advertising business involved in the lawsuit is still strong, and advertising revenue is still the most important part of Google’s revenue. According to the financial report, the advertising revenue of Google’s department in the fourth quarter was US $61.239 billion, higher than US $46.199 billion in the same period last year, with a year-on-year increase of 32.7%, accounting for 81.3% of the total revenue, basically unchanged from 81.2% in the same period last year.
In addition, the company also announced that the board of directors has approved a 20-to-1 split of alpha class A, class B and class C shares in the form of a one-time special dividend. If approved by the general meeting of shareholders, shareholders registered before July 1 will receive an additional 19 shares per share after hours on July 15. As soon as the news came out, it rose nearly 9% after hours on the same day, and its share price was close to a new high of $3000.
As of press time, Google’s class A shares rose slightly by nearly 1% before the market, with a total market value of $1.9 trillion (about 12 trillion yuan). In the past five trading days, Google has withstood the sharp rise and fall of leading technology stocks and has risen nearly 7% in total.
Europe’s largest Unicorn behind pricerunner
won the blessing of BlackRock, Softbank and ant group
If pricerunner looks “weak” as a financial technology start-up, its parent company klarna should not be underestimated.
According to public information, pricerunner is a financial technology platform from Sweden. It was established in 1999. Its main business is e-commerce shopping price comparison. Its business covers Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the UK. It provides users with product and promotion information of 3.4 million commodities from 25 countries.
Pricerunner was acquired by “mobile payment unicorn” and “European flower chant” klarna in November last year, which is klarna’s fourth acquisition in 2021. Previously, klarna successively acquired digital wallet platform Stockard, social shopping platform hero and “software and service” platform apprl.
Klarna was founded in 2005 and is also from Sweden. Its function is consistent with Alipay in some aspects, it can provide payment processing services for the e-commerce industry, manage shop claims and customer payments. Klarna is currently the world’s largest “buy before pay” (bnpl) service provider, providing services similar to Huabai. Klarna’s business scope now covers 17 countries around the world and is applicable to the collection of e-commerce, games, virtual, software, etc.
According to the data on its official website, by the end of 2021, klarna served more than 85 million consumers, with an average daily transaction volume of more than 1 million. It has handled more than 315 million transactions, and the number of monthly live users has reached 100 million.
Capital is also pouring into this “unicorn”.
Public information shows that since April 2019, klarna has conducted 14 rounds of important financing in less than three years. Last year alone, there were seven financing. The main investors include BlackRock, Softbank, ant group, Sequoia Capital, visa, etc. For example, in March 2021, klarna received $1 billion from Sequoia Capital and visa. Three months later, klarna received $639 million from Softbank’s vision fund
(klarna valuation trend in the first half of 2012-2021 source: futu NIU)
After Softbank’s investment, klarna’s valuation reached US $45.6 billion, becoming the top five well-known unicorn in the world and the largest “unicorn” in Europe. The market expects that klarna will be listed through IPO or spac as soon as this year.
