Google To Face UK Digital Antitrust Probe, First In 2025

The UK’s competition watchdog launched a formal antitrust investigation into Google on Tuesday centered on its search businesses. 

It is the first investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched this year.

The investigation will assess Google’s position in search and search advertising services and how they impact consumers and businesses such as advertising, publishing, and rival search engines.

The watchdog acknowledged search is vital for economic growth, and that Google’s services have generated “significant benefits” for the U.K. by creating a “gateway through which millions of people and businesses access and navigate the internet.”

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Google accounts for more than 90% of all general search queries in the U.K., and more than 200,000 of the island nation’s advertisers use Google’s search advertising. Its search services also generate “a wealth of data that can be used to develop new AI products and services to foster innovation.”

The CMA believes that competition could reduce the cost of advertising and allow businesses to innovate in alternative ways to traditional services. The document specifically called out the ability for startups to develop products based on artificial intelligence.

Newcomers in artificial intelligence (AI) search that increased a presence last year included ChatGPT, Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, Anthropic, Perplexity, Microsoft, and many others. That list doesn’t even include companies such as Algolia, Zapier, and Brave.

It’s well documented that in the United States AI has spurred immense competition in categories related to search and AI.

The recent CES 2025 conference in Las Vegas focused on AI. Many of those startups include reinvented services in search. The watchdog might be beating a rapidly evolving but extinct entity.

“The biggest change to the way search engines have delivered information to us since the 1990s is happening right now,” according to a piece by MIT Technology Review. “No more keyword searching. No more sorting through links to click. Instead, we’re entering an era of conversational search.”

This means rather than keywords, these platforms use complete questions voiced or typed or shown images in natural language. And instead of links, those looking for answers will be met with information based on live data from across the internet.

It’s difficult to determine whether regulatory boards have caught on. The CMA’s investigation will examine whether Google has SMS in the UK search and search advertising sectors and, in parallel, consider whether conduct requirements should be imposed in the event of a final designation decision.

Still, the CMA will look into Google for weak competition, possible leveraging of market power, potential and exploitative conduct.

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