This publication previously reported the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act decision against Google: a $1 billion fine, the first under the law, for favoring its own services and blocking app developers from steering users toward cheaper options outside Google Play. The next chapter of that story is now underway. Reuters reported Tuesday that the ruling has opened the door to private damages lawsuits from smaller search and shopping rivals in at least six European countries, with lawyers and litigation financiers estimating the potential aggregate at up to $10 billion. Reuters attributes that figure to its sources, not to a confirmed total.

Thomas Hoppner, a partner at Geradin Partners who advised German price comparison platform Idealo, told Reuters, “I think this will trigger a new wave of litigation.” He added that specialized search firms “may seek damages, possibly not just for the period of the DMA but also for the years prior to the DMA breaches,” a reference to Article 102, the older EU law barring abuse of a dominant market position. That widens the exposure window well beyond the DMA’s short life.

The detail most easily missed in Tuesday’s reporting: Google has quietly settled with Foundem, the British comparison-shopping site that pursued its complaint against Google from the very beginning of the case that produced the 2017 Shopping decision. Reuters reports the settlement terms are confidential. Google also settled with UK shopping site Connexity earlier this year. A company telling reporters the lawsuits have no merit is resolving the oldest one on the docket.

A Google spokesperson gave Reuters a flat denial of the broader claims: “We strongly disagree with these lawsuits, which are brought by companies looking for a payout instead of investing in their own products.”

The Idealo case shows what a completed judgment looks like. A Berlin court awarded Idealo 465 million euros in November, the largest antitrust damages award a German court has ever issued, according to Reuters.

Kelkoo, the UK price comparison site pursuing its own claims against Google, expects the DMA finding to strengthen its case. “We expect these to be impacted somewhat by the DMA decision because it shows that Google is still self-referencing even to this day,” Kelkoo chief executive Richard Stables told Reuters.

In Amsterdam, two separate groups have taken Google to court over its shopping auctions, together seeking more than $1 billion, with the litigation financier LitFin behind both. LitFin chief operating officer Matej Pardo told Reuters more filings are coming: “There are already a lot of these claims being filed, and probably more that are (being) prepared.” He was sharper about Google’s calculus, calling the fines “a cost of doing business” and warning that wait times for a payout can run “up to eight years.”

Moltiply Group, the Italian company behind price comparison site Trovaprezzi.it, is seeking 2.97 billion euros on its own. Chairman Marco Pescarmona told Reuters the DMA ruling will strengthen damage claims generally, but questioned whether Brussels will keep enforcing the law if Google’s noncompliance continues. “The DMA is a very good piece of legislation. The defect maybe is that it’s so effective that they’re afraid to use it,” he said.

Sweden’s PriceRunner, backed by Klarna, won roughly $1.97 billion including interest from a Stockholm court in July. Klarna welcomed the ruling but is not expecting a quick payout. “We can expect an appeal to take over a year, and likely years,” Klarna counsel Pontus Scherp told Reuters.

The claims stack on top of 10.4 billion euros in EU fines against Google over the past decade, including a 4.1 billion euro Android penalty the company lost last month after a long appeal, per Reuters. They also land as Alphabet’s AI spending has pushed free cash flow negative for the first time since the company went public, a detail Reuters ties to the wider pressure on Google’s balance sheet.

A regulatory fine, however large the headline number, is a cost a company Alphabet’s size can absorb once and file under overhead. That is the exact behavior Pardo accuses Google of banking on. Private damages do not work that way: they scale to the harm proven against each individual rival, and they keep arriving one court at a time rather than closing out in a single Brussels press release. The 2008 comparison-shopping case is the template search teams should study, not the DMA fine. Google changed how it displayed shopping results, rival traffic collapsed within the search results page, and it has taken close to two decades for money to move from that change to the companies harmed by it. That lag, not the size of any single fine, is the real lesson for anyone whose business depends on one distribution channel it does not control.

Reuters (Supantha Mukherjee and Foo Yun Chee), published July 28, 2026.