UK Financial Market Authority slaps Google Search and its more than 90% market share with antitrust probe

The Competition and Markets Authority – the UK’s antitrust watchdog – is wasting no time in bringing in its first formal investigation of 2025 under its new rules that came into force this month. She’s looking at Google’s dominance of the search marketincluding the new work it is doing in artificial intelligence research as well as its giant search advertising business, and what remedies it might impose to improve competition in this area.

Those interested will have to respond to the inquiry Until February 3 to comment.

This is the first of two investigations the CMA has promised into big tech companies this month under its new rules, so keep an eye on which company will be the subject of the second investigation.

“Millions of people and businesses across the UK rely on the search and advertising services provided by Google,” Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA, said in a statement. “That’s why it’s so important to make sure these services deliver good outcomes for people and businesses and that there’s a level playing field, especially as AI has the potential to transform search services. Our mission is to ensure people get the full benefit of choice and innovation in search services and get a bargain.” Fair – for example in how they collect and store their data and for businesses, whether you’re a competitor search engine, an advertiser or a news organisation, we want to make sure there’s a level playing field for all businesses, big and small, to succeed.

The CMA has chosen an easy target: it is already known that Google searches account for more than 90% of… everyone General UK search queries and over 200,000 businesses use the portal to advertise.

Additionally, Google has already lost or is losing several antitrust cases in other jurisdictions due to its dominance in search – most recently in an antitrust case. The huge domestic market of the United Statesside by side Multiple research cases in Europe. The Capital Markets Authority said it was “in regular contact” with other authorities.

At issue for the CMA is whether it can classify Google’s search business as having “strategic market status” (SMS). Once appointed, it says: “The CMA can impose conduct requirements or propose pro-competitive interventions to achieve positive outcomes for UK consumers and businesses.”

She said she would look into three main areas.

First, it examines whether Google imposes “weak competition and barriers to entry and innovation in search.” To be sure, competition is already weak (see market share above), but the barriers to innovation are certainly debatable, given the progress we’ve seen from companies like OpenAI in offering “answers” as alternatives to basic search queries.

It will also investigate whether Google gives preference to its own services in areas such as advertising and artificial intelligence. Finally, we will look at whether Google is using large amounts of consumer data without informed consent. This will include the use of content from intellectual property owners and publishers.

At its most extreme, an investigation can take the form of proposals to break up a business, as has happened in the United States. Other remedies could include opening search results to competitors, dismantling the location of its search engine integration, or opening up advertising. Part of the results to other parties.

This is already on the CMA’s radar: it notes in its announcement that “effective competition can reduce search advertising costs, equivalent to approximately £500 per household per year, which in turn leads to lower prices in various sectors of the economy.

The other big area to look at here is artificial intelligence.

The announcement of the investigation comes at a time when Google itself is striving to improve its search experience in the face of new competition from artificial intelligence-based services. Services like ChatGPT and Perplexity are creating effective alternatives to google.com Using generative AI technology to allow people to ask questions and receive full results – rather than a long list of links, which may forego links to other sites altogether.

Google itself has built its own version of this experiment, called Gemini, and has also returned fully formed “answers” to search queries at the top of its results pages. The fact that there is now a module at the top of search pages where Google presents results from its own generative AI technology likely gives it a window into which it may be asked to provide GenAI results from other parties.