The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has finally taken a significant step towards promoting fair competition in the tech industry by launching an antitrust investigation into Google’s search services. This move is a long-overdue wake-up call for the tech giant, which has been accused of abusing its dominant position in the search market.
The Competition and Markets Authority said that it’s looking to assess whether Google has “strategic market status” (SMS) under the new UK Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCC), which officially entered into effect on January 1, aims to prevent anti-competitive behavior in digital markets.
“The investigation will assess Google’s position in search and search advertising services and how this impacts consumers and businesses, including advertisers, news publishers, and rival search engines,” the Competition and Markets Authority said in a press release.
Sarah Cardell, the CMA’s chief executive, said the regulator was probing Google’s search market dominance to ensure a “level playing field”—especially as artificial intelligence is shifting the way people search online.
In a press release, Sarah Cardell said, and I quote, “It’s our job to ensure people get the full benefit of choice and innovation in search services and get a fair deal—for example, in how their data is collected and stored.
“And for businesses, whether you are a rival search engine, an advertiser, or a news organization, we want to ensure there is a level playing field for all businesses, large and small, to succeed,” she added.
According to the CMA, Google accounts for more than 90% of all general search queries in the UK, and more than 200,000 advertisers in the country use the firm’s search advertising tools. This stranglehold on the market has raised concerns about the company’s ability to crush the competition and limit consumer choice.
In responding to the investigation by the CMA in a blog post published later on Tuesday, January 14, by Oliver Bethell, Google’s director of competition, he wrote: “We look forward to engaging constructively and laying out how our services benefit U.K. consumers and also businesses, as well as the trade-offs inherent in any new regulations.”
So, what do you think? Is this investigation a step in the right direction, or is it just another futile attempt to rein in Big Tech? Let us know in the comments below.
