Can Google's unstoppable force in search and AI be stopped? The UK's CMA is about to find out
A prelude to action, or an exercise in bureaucracy? The UK's Competitions and Markets Authority has placed Google on a regulatory pedestal it might not like.
Struggling as it seems to be this week with exact designations, the UK Government, in the shape of the country’s Competitions and Markets Authority regulatory body, has actually managed to pin a label on the mighty Google: strategic market status.
Formally designating Google with strategic market status in “general search and search advertising services” is, as the body points out, not accusing of anything, but it is surely a prelude to action by the CMA. A prelude to exactly what action is the question.
The designation means the CMA considers a company “has substantial and entrenched market power and a position of strategic significance in a digital activity”.
Carefully keeping the language of neutrality, as is fitting, the CMA explained in a statement that: “Designating Google with SMS is not a finding of wrongdoing and does not introduce any immediate requirements. However, it enables the CMA to consider proportionate, targeted interventions to ensure that general search services are open to effective competition, and that consumers and businesses that rely on Google can have confidence that they are treated fairly.”
Crucially, the CMA have included “other AI-based search features, such as AI Overviews and AI Mode” in the scope of the designation. Gemini is out of scope, as it’s not part of search.
Concerning any actual action on the designation, the statement said only that the “CMA expects to begin consulting on possible interventions later in the year.”
It’s not exactly regulatory blitzkrieg is it?
It’s a bit like saying they’ve identified the large, grey, trumpeting mammal, which never forgets and has been sat suffocatingly on top of the search industry, and everyone else’s too, is indisputably an elephant. Hopefully we’ll still manage to wheeze out a “yes” when they actually ask if we are being suffocated in another year’s time.
The start of something
We may have wished for something more, but it’s a step towards change if it is ever to happen. The CMA has done some excellent work into Google’s market dominance, including the most forensic account of Google’s domination of the advertising market, insight which made its way to legislators across the Atlantic investigating Google’s ad monopoly.
One can’t fault their thoroughness as investigators, yet it’s as enforcers we more require them.
Media and publishing industry response has been favourable, if tempered, with Owen Meredith of the News Media Association saying, “The CMA’s decision, confirming that Google has strategic market status in search, is a turning point in the fight for a fair and competitive digital economy in the UK. Search is a key discovery path for users accessing news online and Google has wielded its dominance to the detriment of users and publishers.”
He did point, however, to the other elephant in the regulatory room, political in nature: “The British government must also stand firm and continue to resist pressure from the US President, bidding on behalf of Silicon Valley, to dilute pro-competition remedies under the guise of ‘innovation’.”
This, we all know, is the real game. The fact is that the UK is often treated as a province in someone else’s digital empire and alternatives do not really exist for the sort of demands the CMA might make of Google, least of local alternatives.
Finding clarity where there is little to be found
In the past few weeks, a specialist and quality site serving my own pastime of mountain biking has gone defunct. As someone who still breathes journalism, it always hits hard when an outlet that supported both staff and freelance writers suddenly transmits only static.
The reasons behind such a closure can be many and publishing has always been a perilous game, yet I can say that the entire system, from search to advertising, is so broken that it’s impossible to gauge whether a publisher succeeded or failed on their own merits.
That demands a commercial clarity which the CMA to my knowledge has no means of determining but will certainly need. They will need help, and lots of willing volunteers to fill in the blanks. Do you know any?
Anything less, and it doesn’t matter if the CMA has collected evidence from the devil himself that Google has fleeced his best content.
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Couldn't agree more, it's a shrewd analysis of the CMA's careful but ultimately slow approach, especialy given how fast AI models like Gemini (which is out of scope) are already shifting the goalposts for search and market power.