UK CMA slaps Google Search and its 90%+ market share with antitrust investigation

The Competition and Markets Authority – the UK’s antitrust watchdog – is wasting no time in hosting its first official investigation of 2025 under its new rules which came into effect this month. It is searched in the Google’s market dominance in Searchincluding the new work it does in AI research as well as its giant search advertising business, and what remedies it could impose to improve competition in the space.

Those who are interested in answering the survey will have until February 3 to comment.

This is the first of two investigations that the CMA promises in Big Tech this month under its new rules, so take a look at which company will be the subject of the second.

“Millions of people and businesses across the UK rely on Google’s search and advertising services,” Sarah Cardell, Chief Executive of the CMA, said in a statement. “That is why it is so important to ensure that these services provide good results for people and companies and that there is an equal playing field, especially since AI has the potential to transform search services. It is the we work to ensure that 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. And for businesses, yes an engine of rival search, an advertiser or a news organization, we want to ensure that there is a level playing field for all companies, large and small, to succeed.”

The CMA chose an easy target: it is already known that Google Search contains more than 90% of everyone general search queries in the UK, and over 200,000 businesses use the portal to advertise.

In addition, Google has already lost or is losing several antitrust cases in other jurisdictions over its search dominance – most recently in its huge US home marketbeside more research cases in Europe. The CMA said it is in “regular contact” with other authorities.

The question for the CMA is whether it can designate Google’s search business as a “strategic market status” (SMS). Once appointed, he says, “the CMA can impose behavioral requirements or propose pro-competitive interventions to achieve positive outcomes for UK consumers and businesses”.

It will be in three main areas, he said.

First, it looks at whether Google poses “weak competition and barriers to entry and innovation in search.” Competition is certainly weak (see market share above), but the barriers to innovation are definitely debatable, given the advances we’ve seen from companies like OpenAI in providing “answers” as alternatives to basic research questions.

It will also investigate whether Google gives preference to its services in areas such as advertising and AI. And finally, it will look at whether Google is using large amounts of consumer data without informed consent. This will include the use of content by intellectual property owners and publishers.

At its most drastic, the investigation could play in the form of business-breaking proposals, as in the U.S. Other remedies could include opening up search results to competitors, unbundling where their engine of search is integrated, or advertising opening. part of the results to other parties.

This is already on the CMA’s radar: it noted in its announcement that “effective competition could keep search advertising costs, equivalent to almost £500 per household per year, in turn lowering prices across the economy”.

The other big area to look at here is AI.

The announcement of the survey came at a time when Google itself is scrambling to improve its search experience in the face of new competition from AI-based services. Services like ChatGPT and Perplexity are building effective alternatives to google.com using generative AI technology to allow people to ask questions and receive – instead of a long list of links – fully formed results, which could give up links to other sites altogether.

Google itself has built its own version of this experience, called Gemini, and has even returned fully formed “answers” to search queries at the top of its results pages. The fact that there is now a unit at the top of the search pages where Google provides results from its own generative AI technology potentially gives a window where it could be asked to provide GenAI results from other parties.