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Google may have to change the way its search engine works in the UK, including potentially offering users the option to choose rival search services, as part of new regulation from the UK’s competition authority.
In a decision handed down on Friday, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has designated Google Search with Strategic Market Status (SMS)—a qualifier given to companies that are considered to have “substantial and entrenched market power”—which would allow the regulator to wield more power over it.
This decision follows a 10-month investigation into Google, and it is the first time that these powers, which come under the UK’s new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, have been used to target a major tech company. Google’s SMS will last up to five years under this legislation. The CMA has also identified Apple as potentially having SMS with its mobile platform, but the authority’s investigation is still ongoing.
Back in June, the CMA published a roadmap of potential regulatory changes for Google if it decided to designate it with SMS. Alongside requiring “choice screens” on Google that allow people to choose rival search engines, proposed measures include “fair ranking principles,” which will allow companies to raise issues on how they appear in Google Search, and increased data portability, making it easier for people to transfer their data between search engines.
The new measures could also include forcing Google to ask for permission to use publishers’ content in its AI Overviews “without affecting if and how they appear in Google Search,” which may positively impact UK publishers. Major UK publishers’ visibility in search results dropped by up to 80 percent compared to 2019 correlating to the rise in frequency of the AI results, according to a report from Enders Analysis.
“The decision to formally designate Google with Strategic Market Status is an important step to improving competition in digital markets,” argues Rocio Concha, director of policy and advocacy at UK consumer watchdog Which?. “Online search is evolving as gen AI tools become more widely used, but the CMA must still act to tackle the harmful dominance Google has now and to promote competition between gen AI search tools.”
The CMA claims that Google Search accounts for more than 90 percent of all general search queries in the UK, and that over 200,000 firms in the UK collectively spent more than £10 billion ($13.3 billion) on Google search advertising in 2024.
“Designating Google with SMS enables us to consider proportionate, targeted interventions to ensure that general search services are open to effective competition, and that consumers and businesses that rely on Google can have confidence that they are treated fairly,” the CMA decision report reads.
In a statement shared with WIRED in response to the CMA’s decision, Google’s senior director of competition Oliver Bethell said that many of the ideas for interventions raised in this process would “inhibit UK innovation and growth, potentially slowing product launches at a time of profound AI-based innovation.” It continued: “Others pose direct harm to businesses, with some warning that they may be forced to raise prices for customers.”
This is not a surprising response, says Greg Dowell, senior competition knowledge lawyer at law firm Macfarlanes. “I think we can expect Google and all the other big tech firms that are being subjected to these new rules to try and defend their practices on the basis that they are pro-consumer,” says Dowell. “Ultimately it is natural that Google and other firms in this position don’t want to be constrained in what they can do when it comes to new product development.”
The new regulation will also affect Google Search’s “News” tab and its “Top Stories” carousel, as well as Google Discover. Google News, the company’s stand-alone news product, and AI chatbot Gemini are not affected, the CMA says.
Dowell claims that implementing this roadmap might take a number of months. “The CMA may go further than the EU has done with the [Digital Markets Act], particularly with regards to restrictions relating to Google’s AI services and how they’re integrated into Google search,” he explains.
“The CMA essentially has a huge degree of flexibility in the interventions that it can seek to impose, and so it can continually react to developments as they occur. So that’s one benefit of the UK digital markets regulation regime, particularly when you compare it to the situation in the EU, where these sorts of rules are fixed in the regulation itself.”
