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

The Competition and Markets Authority – the UK’s antitrust watchdog – is wasting no time in filing its first official investigation of 2025 under its new rules that come into effect this month. looking for it Google dominates the search marketIncluding the new work it’s doing in AI search as well as its massive search advertising business, and what remedies it can impose to improve competition in the space.

Those interested should respond to the inquiry Until February 3 for comments.

It’s the first of two investigations the CMA is promising big tech this month under its new rules, so keep an eye out to see 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,” CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell said in a statement. “That’s why it’s so important to ensure these services are delivering good results for people and businesses and have a level playing field, especially as AI has the potential to transform search services. It’s our job to make sure people get the full benefit of choice and innovation in search services and get a fair deal – for example how their data is collected and stored. And for businesses, whether you’re a competing search engine, an advertiser or a news agency, we want to make sure there’s a level playing field for all businesses, big and small, to succeed.”

CMA chose a simple target: it is already known that Google searches more than 90% all Common search queries in the UK, and over 200,000 businesses use the portal to advertise.

In addition, Google has already lost or lost multiple antitrust cases in other jurisdictions over its search dominance — most recently its The US is a huge home marketas well as Multiple search cases in Europe. The CMA said it was in “regular contact” with other authorities.

At issue for the CMA is whether it can characterize Google’s search business as a “strategic market situation” (SMS). Once designated, it says, “the CMA may impose conduct requirements or propose competitive interventions to achieve positive outcomes for UK consumers and businesses.”

This will be looked at in three main areas, it said.

First, it’s looking at whether Google is creating “weak competition and barriers to entry and innovation in search.” Competition is certainly already weak (see market share above), but while the barriers to innovation are certainly debatable, we’ve seen the progress of companies like OpenAI in providing “answers” as alternatives to basic search questions.

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

At its most stringent, the investigation could take the form of a business break-up proposal, as in the US. Other remedies could include opening up search results to competitors, unbundling where its search engine is integrated, or opening up advertising. Part of the result goes to other parties.

It’s already on the CMA’s radar: it noted in its announcement that “effective competition can keep search advertising costs down, to the equivalent of around £500 per household per year, resulting in lower prices across the economy.”

Another big area to watch here is AI.

The announcement of the investigation comes 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 creating viable alternatives google.com Using generative AI technology allows people to ask questions and receive — instead of a long list of links — fully formed results, which can exclude links to other sites entirely.

Google itself is building its own version of this experience, called Gemini, and it’s also returning fully formed ‘answers’ to search queries at the top of its own results pages. The fact that there is now a unit at the top of search pages where Google provides results from its own generative AI technology potentially gives it a window where it may need to provide GenAI results from other parties.