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The
Competition and Markets Authority said it will examine whether
Google is weakening competition by stifling innovation, giving
preference to its own services, or exploiting user data.
Using new powers to investigate competition in digital markets,
the watchdog said it would determine whether Google should be
given “strategic market status” that would require imposing
remedies to change its behavior.
The regulator said it will look in particular at Google's role
in shaping the development of new artificial services and
interfaces such as “answer engines," in ways that “limit the
competitive constraint they impose on Google Search.”
AI-powered chatbots have become increasingly popular with
internet users looking for information online. Google last year
retooled its search engine so that it now frequently favors
responses crafted by artificial intelligence over website links.
Google said in a statement that it "will continue to engage
constructively with the CMA to ensure that new rules benefit all
types of websites, and still allow people in the U.K. to benefit
from helpful and cutting-edge services.”
AI's potential to transform online search services means fair
competition is important, said Sarah Cardell, the U.K.
regulator's chief executive.
“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,” Cardell said
in a statement. “And for businesses, whether you are a rival
search engine, an advertiser or a news organisation, we want to
ensure there is a level playing field for all businesses, large
and small, to succeed.”
The CMA will also investigate Google’s practice of collecting
vast amounts of consumer data without informed consent, and its
use of content by online publishers without paying them fairly.
The U.K. investigation is the latest salvo in an onslaught of
regulatory pressure that Google is facing on both sides of the
Atlantic.
In both the U.S. and Canada, authorities are targeting Google’s
ad business with lawsuits accusing the company of
anticompetitive or monopolistic conduct in the digital ad
industry, which they want to resolve by breaking up the company.
European Union regulators, meanwhile, have been carrying out
their own antitrust investigation and signaled that they would
push for Google to sell off parts of its business in order to
satisfy concerns about its lucrative digital ad business.
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