{"id":32481,"date":"2025-06-24T15:49:06","date_gmt":"2025-06-24T15:49:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=32481"},"modified":"2025-06-24T15:49:06","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T15:49:06","slug":"britain-will-search-in-vain-for-ways-to-hobble-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=32481","title":{"rendered":"Britain will search in vain for ways to hobble Google"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> \n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description o3-type-body-base\"><span>Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=34e4f093-96ec-4233-a219-5eb76d7637c7\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>Innovation leads, and regulation follows. Even so, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/26aa105f-fabb-4061-bd6d-fd13ba94f691\" data-trackable=\"link\">UK competition watchdog\u2019s efforts<\/a> to rein in Google are out by a country mile. While there are potential dangers to the search giant\u2019s dominance, including large language models such as Open AI, slowcoach rulemaking is not one of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Competition and Markets Authority, which listed a series of possible measures against Google on Tuesday, is in familiar territory. The EU, Japan and Australia have all imposed various limitations; in the US the Department of Justice has long accused it of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/opa\/pr\/department-justice-prevails-landmark-antitrust-case-against-google\" data-trackable=\"link\">monopolising <\/a>digital ad markets.<\/p>\n<p>The CMA\u2019s case is that Google\u2019s dominance in search \u2014 more than 90 per cent of both traffic and ad revenue \u2014 enables it to extract more money from UK advertisers.<\/p>\n<p>True enough, but it could hardly be otherwise. Outsize market share is a hallmark of anything that relies on scale, network effects, access to data and compute power \u2014 a category that also includes social networking and artificial intelligence chatbots. Even in China, a counter-intuitively competitive marketplace for search, the dominant Baidu hosts more than half the traffic.<\/p>\n<p>Should the CMA opt to award Google its strategic market status label when the probe concludes in October, it must decide what curbs that brings. Some of the initial proposals, which the CMA would implement shortly after the designation, are sensible and straightforward to enact.<\/p>\n<p>These include making choices, rather than Google, the default on the company\u2019s web browsers and ensuring publishers\u2019 content is attributed. Trickier and more time intensive: providing sufficient transparency on what is and isn\u2019t paid for in Google\u2019s ranking and search results.<\/p>\n<p>Further stipulations will entail further consultations. And take time, because debate will be fierce. Users like convenience, but businesses have other concerns: raunchy retailer Ann Summers <a href=\"https:\/\/assets.publishing.service.gov.uk\/media\/67c02ccb16dc9038974dbc01\/Ann_Summers_Ltd.pdf\" data-trackable=\"link\">gripes <\/a>that turning off the SafeSearch filter still leaves its \u201cbasic everyday\u201d lace underwear invisible.<\/p>\n<p>Rules on search engines can be distortive, shunting business from one set of actors to another without necessarily benefiting consumers. After the EU\u2019s Digital Markets Act eliminated Google Flights, aggregators like Skyscanner benefited. But airlines harrumph that free direct booking clicks are down as much as 30 per cent. EasyJet even blames this for <a href=\"https:\/\/assets.publishing.service.gov.uk\/media\/67c02cbd16dc9038974dbc00\/Easyjet.pdf\" data-trackable=\"link\">late flights<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, these rules are no fun for Google either. Compliance is not just about hiring shoals of lawyers, but also having plenty of engineers on board to tailor products for a global latticework of rules and regulations.<\/p>\n<p>But if that is the cost of being a monolith, the benefits still win out. Big Tech, like Big Pharma, will always be caught up in wrestling matches with sovereigns. The blessing for Google is that, in the UK at least, the balance of strength lies on its side.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/mailto:louise.lucas@ft.com\" data-trackable=\"link\">louise.lucas@ft.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/34e4f093-96ec-4233-a219-5eb76d7637c7\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":32482,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tech","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}