The U.Okay.’s competitors regulator said on Tuesday it’s contemplating a brand new market designation for Google that will require the search big to offer different search choices to customers, rank search outcomes “extra pretty,” and provide better management to publishers over how their content material is utilized in search and AI Overviews.
Below the brand new digital markets competitors regime that went into drive earlier this 12 months, the U.Okay.’s Competitors and Markets Authority (CMA) mentioned it’s launching a session on whether or not to designate Google with “strategic market standing.”
Below that designation, which the CMA says is relevant to firms with a “sufficiently highly effective place” of their market, Google could be compelled to stick to a slew of measures, together with selection screens to let customers determine and change between search companies (doubtlessly together with AI assistants); honest rating rules for search outcomes; higher controls for publishers in how their content material — collected for search — is utilized in Google’s AI companies (together with AI Overviews and Gemini AI Assistant); and making certain folks can switch their information, resembling their search historical past.
In a blog post concerning the session and proposed designation, CMA chief government Sarah Cardell famous that U.Okay. companies spent greater than £33,000 per advertiser on Google search adverts final 12 months.
“Google search accounts for greater than 90% of all basic search queries within the UK, with hundreds of thousands of individuals counting on it as a key gateway to the web […] If competitors was working effectively, we’d count on these prices to be decrease,” wrote Cardell.
“These focused and proportionate actions would give UK companies and customers extra selection and management over how they work together with Google’s search companies — in addition to unlocking better alternatives for innovation throughout the UK tech sector and broader economic system,” Cardell mentioned in a separate assertion.
The CMA is at the moment gathering opinions on this designation and the proposed measures from business stakeholders and can decide on the designation by October 13.
Google didn’t instantly return a request for remark.