The Competition and Markets Authority – the UK's antitrust watchdog – is wasting no time launching its first formal investigation in 2025 under its new rules which came into force this month. Looking inside. Google's market dominance in searchIn addition to the new work it's doing on AI search, including its giant search advertising business. How can it be remedied to improve competition in the space?
There will be people interested in responding to the inquiry. Until February 3rd to comment.
It is the first of two investigations the CMA has promised into Big Tech this month under its new rules. So keep an eye on which company will be the second case.
“Millions of people and businesses across the UK rely on Google's search and advertising services,” Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA, said in a statement. “That's why it's so important to ensure that these services are delivering great results for people and businesses, and that there's a level playing field, especially as AI has the potential to transform search services. It's our job to ensure that users get the full benefits of choice and innovation in search services and get a fair deal—for example, how their data is collected and stored. for businesses; You are a competitor search engine; Be it an advertiser or a news organization; Businesses big and small We want to make sure there's a level playing field for all businesses.”
CMA chose an easy target: more than 90% of Google Search already knows accounts. All Over 200,000 businesses in the UK use the portal to advertise with general search queries.
In addition, Google has already lost several antitrust cases in other jurisdictions over its search dominance — most recently its The huge US housing marketcompare Many searches in Europe. The CMA said it was in “regular contact” with other authorities.
The issue for the CMA was whether Google's search business could be characterized as having a “strategic market position” (SMS). Once defined, it states, “the CMA can propose competition interventions to achieve positive outcomes for UK consumers and businesses”.
He said it will be looked at in three main areas.
First, Google is looking at whether it feigns “weak competition and barriers to entry and innovation in search.” Competition is certainly weak already (see market share above), but the barriers to innovation are certainly not limited by the advances we've seen from companies like OpenAI in providing “answers” as alternatives to basic searches.
Google will also investigate whether to prioritize its own services in areas such as advertising and AI. Finally, We will see if Google uses large amounts of user data without notification. This includes using content from intellectual property owners and publishers.
Other remedies available in the US include an investigation in the form of a business separation proposal, opening up search results to competitors; It may include disaggregating where its search engine is integrated or opening advertising. Part of the results to other parties.
It's already on the CMA's radar: “Effective competition can reduce search advertising costs by the equivalent of almost £500 per household per year by reducing prices across the economy,” it said in its announcement.
Another big area to watch here is AI.
The announcement of the investigation comes as Google itself is scrambling to improve its search experience in the face of new competition from AI-based services. Services like ChatGPT and Perplexity are building effective alternatives. google.com It uses next-generation AI technology to allow people to ask questions and receive — instead of long lists of links — fully structured results. You can avoid links to other sites entirely.
Google itself is building its own version of this experience, called Gemini, and it's also returning fully structured 'answers' to searches on top of its own results pages. The fact that Google already has a unit at the top of search pages that generates results from its own GenAI technology could give it a window into what other parties might need to provide GenAI results.