The UK's competition regulator said on Tuesday it was considering granting Google a new market category that would require the tech giant to offer alternative search options to users, rank search results "fairer" and give publishers greater control over how their content is used in searches and AI Overviews.
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As part of the new Digital Markets Competition Regulation, which came into force earlier this year, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced the launch of a consultation on whether Google should be classified as having “ strategic importance in the market ”.
Under this classification, which the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) considers appropriate for companies that hold a “sufficiently strong position” in their market, Google will be required to comply with a series of measures, including: choice screens that allow users to choose and switch between different search services (including potentially AI Assistants), fair ranking principles for search results, better control by publishers over how their content — which is collected for search — is used in Google’s AI services (such as AI Overviews and the Gemini Assistant), and the ability to port user data , such as their search history .
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In a related post on the CMA blog about the consultation and the proposed categorisation, chief executive Sarah Cardell noted that UK businesses spent over £33,000 per advertiser on Google search ads last year
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The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is currently in the process of gathering views from industry stakeholders on this categorisation and the proposed measures, and is expected to make its final decision by 13 October.
Source: techcrunch
