Google is being investigated by the UK competition watchdog over the impact of its search and advertising practices on consumers, news publishers, businesses and rival search engines.
The tech company accounts for more than 90% of general searches in the UK, according to the Competition and Markets Authority.
The CMA estimates that search advertising costs the equivalent of nearly £500 for each UK household a year, which could be kept down with effective competition.
The watchdog announced on Tuesday it will investigate if Google is blocking competitors from entering the market, and whether it is engaging in “potential exploitative conduct” by the mass collection of consumers’ data without informed consent.
It will also investigate whether Google is using its position as the pre-eminent search engine to give an unfair advantage to its own shopping and travel services.
The investigation will take up to nine months and could result in Google being forced to share the mountains of data it collects with other businesses, or to give publishers greater control over how their content – books, newspaper articles and music – is used, including by Google’s fast-growing artificial intelligence systems.
The investigation is the first launched by the watchdog since a new digital markets competition regime came into force in the UK on 1 January 2025, allowing the UK authorities to issue “conduct requirements” to technology companies.
There is increasing anti-regulation pressure from the US before Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday. Last week, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Meta, attacked European nations for “an ever-increasing number of laws institutionalising censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative”. He promised to “work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies”.
On Monday, Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, announced a plan to “mainline AI into the veins” of the UK and be a “trusted partner” to AI companies with a “pro-growth and pro-innovation” approach to regulation.
On Tuesday, it was reported that the EU is reassessing its own investigations against US technology companies including Google, Meta and Apple. In the past 10 months it has launched investigations under the EU’s digital markets regulations, but the Financial Times reported that the review could lead to these being scaled back or their remit changed.
The Google investigation will look into the impact of its standard search, its Google Ads platform and its Gemini AI assistant.
Sarah Cardell, the chief executive of the CMA, said: “It’s our job to ensure 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, whether you are a rival search engine, an advertiser or a news organisation, we want to ensure there is a level playing field for all businesses, large and small, to succeed.”
The CMA has already said it will launch a second investigation into a big technology company later this month. The investigation process involved the CMA first designating a firm with “strategic market status” in relation to a particular digital activity. To qualify it must have “substantial and entrenched market power” in a digital activity linked to the UK and global turnover of more than £25bn or UK turnover of more than £1bn.
A Google spokesperson said: “People across the UK trust Google search to help them find what they need. Google search supports millions of UK businesses to grow by reaching customers in innovative ways. The CMA’s announcement today recognises that ‘search is vital for economic growth’. We will continue to engage constructively with the CMA to ensure that new rules benefit all types of websites, and still allow people in the UK to benefit from helpful and cutting edge services.”
