(Bloomberg/Upmanyu Trivedi) — Alphabet Inc.’s Google became the first company to be designated with so called strategic market status in the UK, exposing the US firm’s online search and advertising business to a closer scrutiny by the country’s antitrust watchdog.
The Competition and Markets Authority said Google’s entrenched market power merits the designation — aimed at ensuring competition in digital markets. The watchdog raised concerns over fairness in Google search results, high advertising costs and artificial intelligence-generated search responses.
“We have found that Google maintains a strategic position in the search and search advertising sector – with more than 90% of searches in the UK taking place on its platform,” Will Hayter, executive director for digital markets at the CMA, said in a statement on Friday.
The investigation doesn’t cover Google’s Gemini AI assistant but “this position will be kept under review given uncertainty over how the market is developing,” the CMA said.
The UK move to rein in Google comes after a wave of European Union penalties targeting the company’s behavior. Last month, the EU announced it was fining Google almost €3 billion ($3.5 billion) and ordered the search giant to stop favoring its own advertising technology services. US President Donald Trump called the move “very unfair” and threatened higher tariffs.
Britain must avoid “costly restrictions” and “unduly onerous regulations” Oliver Bethell, Google’s senior director for competition, said after the announcement. “Many of the ideas for interventions that have been raised in this process would inhibit UK innovation and growth, potentially slowing product launches,” Bethell said.
The CMA designation falls under tougher rules to regulate competition in the digital markets in the nation that came into effect earlier this year.
It doesn’t mean that Google acted anti-competitively but opens the door for measures, such as enforcement and penalties, to address how Google operates search services in the UK. The CMA will start consulting on possible interventions later in the year, it said.
The CMA prioritized areas such as giving users a choice to use different search providers and fair website ranking in search results in the investigation, the watchdog previously said.
It is set to start another round of investigation in 2026 to address concerns such as Google’s bargaining position with publishers and control over search advertising, it said.
(Updates with details from the CMA’s announcement and background throughout.)
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