Investing.com -- Google, owned by Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), is under investigation by United Kingdom (TADAWUL:4280) antitrust officials over its search services and the potential impact on competition in the country. This is the inaugural investigation under the newly established digital-markets regime, which may require the tech giant to make concessions.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced the investigation, aiming to measure Google’s influence in search and search-advertising services and its potential effect on consumers and businesses. These businesses include advertisers, news publishers, and competing search engines.
The investigation has been initiated less than two weeks after the UK’s new digital-markets competition regime came into effect. Under this new system, antitrust officials can assign a so-called strategic market status to companies involved in a particular digital activity. This status allows officials to impose conduct requirements to ensure fair competition.
The CMA will now examine whether Google holds a strategic market status in the search and search-advertising sectors in the UK. If so, conduct requirements could be imposed. These requirements could include Google making its collected data available to other businesses or giving more control to publishers over the use of their data, including in Google’s artificial intelligence services.
Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA, stated that the CMA’s role is to ensure that people benefit fully from choice and innovation in search services and receive a fair deal, such as in how their data is collected and stored.
She added that for businesses, regardless of whether they are a rival search engine, an advertiser, or a news organization, the CMA aims to ensure a level playing field for all businesses, large and small, to succeed.
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