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UK’s CMA joins list of regulators trying to rein in Google

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is joining a pretty long list of regulators in the US and Europe investigating Google’s seeming search monopoly, looking at (among other things) whether it keep prices artificially high and behaves responsibly with all the data it gathers.

This is the CMA’s first strategic market status (SMS) designation investigation under the new digital markets competition regime which came into force in January 2025. The CMA says this will “assess Google’s position in search and search advertising services and how this impacts consumers and businesses including advertisers, news publishers, and rival search engines.”

Well in Q2 2024 search and allied services contributed $48.5bn to the tech giant’s $84.7bn revenue with a net income (profit) of $23.6bn. So a pretty hefty profit margin, suggesting it could easily cut prices (shareholders would moan of course.) As to privacy and whatnot, just like Facebook it always says it’s doing the right things and then doesn’t.

So can the CMA actually do anything about it? One’s instinct is to say it can’t because Google will complain vigorously and delay things, possibly even wheel out one D. Trump, depending on what terms it’s on with the commander in chief. But regulators at least ruffle the feathers of the arrogant tech giants from time to time. One reason given for Elon Musk’s mad attacks on Britain is that he’s worried about media regulator Ofcom interfering with his freedom to disseminate any old garbage on X.

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