Google search could change the UK forever

“The decision to officially assign Google strategic market status is an important step to improve competition in digital markets,” says Rocío Concha, director of policy and advocacy at UK consumer watchdog Which? “Online search is evolving as general AI tools become more widely used, but the CMA still needs to work to address the harmful dominance that Google now has and foster competition among general AI search tools.”

The CMA claims that Google search accounts for more than 90 percent of all general search queries in the UK, and that more than 200,000 UK businesses collectively spent more than £10 billion ($13.3 billion) on Google search advertising in 2024.

“Google’s SMS allocation enables us to consider proportionate and targeted interventions to ensure that public search services are open to effective competition, and that consumers and businesses that rely on Google can be confident that they are being treated fairly,” the CMA’s decision report said.

In a statement shared with WIRED in response to the CMA’s decision, Oliver Bethell, Google’s senior director of competition, said that many of the intervention ideas raised in the process would “prevent innovation and growth in the UK, potentially slowing product launches at a time of deep AI-driven innovation.” “Others pose direct harm to businesses, with some warning that they may be forced to raise prices for customers,” she continued.

This is not a surprising response, says Greg Doyle, senior competition knowledge lawyer at law firm McFarlanes. “I think we can expect Google and all the other big tech companies subject to these new rules to try to defend their practices on the basis that they are pro-consumer,” Doyle says. “Ultimately, it’s only natural that Google and other companies in this position don’t want to be limited in what they can do when it comes to developing new products.”

The new regulation will also affect the “News” tab in Google Search and its “Top Stories” circle, as well as Google Discover. The CMA says Google News, the company’s independent news product, and its AI-powered chatbot Gemini were not affected.

Doyle claims that implementing this roadmap may take several months. He added: “The CMA may go further than what the EU did with the Capital Markets Agreement (Digital Markets Law)“, particularly regarding limitations related to Google’s AI services and how they are integrated into Google Search.”

“The CMA essentially has a high degree of flexibility in the interventions it can seek to impose, and so it can constantly react to developments as they happen. So that’s one of the benefits of the UK’s digital markets regulation regime, especially when compared to the situation in the EU, where these kinds of rules are fixed into the regulation itself.”