Google’s search ad business faces fresh investigation from UK’s competition watchdog

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s competition watchdog said Tuesday it’s investigating Google’s search ad business, adding to global scrutiny that the U.S. tech giant is facing.

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The Competition and Markets Authority said it will examine whether Google is weakening competition by stifling innovation, giving preference to its own services, or exploiting user data.

Using new powers to investigate competition in digital markets, the watchdog said it would determine whether Google should be given “strategic market status” that would require imposing remedies to change its behavior.

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The regulator said it will look in particular at Google’s role in shaping the development of new artificial services and interfaces such as “answer engines,” in ways that “limit the competitive constraint they impose on Google Search.”

AI-powered chatbots have become increasingly popular with internet users looking for information online. Google last year retooled its search engine so that it now frequently favors responses crafted by artificial intelligence over website links.

Google said in a statement that it “will continue to engage constructively with the CMA to ensure that new rules benefit all types of websites, and still allow people in the U.K. to benefit from helpful and cutting-edge services.”

AI’s potential to transform online search services means fair competition is important, said Sarah Cardell, the U.K. regulator’s chief executive.

“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,” Cardell said in a statement. “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.”

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The CMA will also investigate Google’s practice of collecting vast amounts of consumer data without informed consent, and its use of content by online publishers without paying them fairly.

The U.K. investigation is the latest salvo in an onslaught of regulatory pressure that Google is facing on both sides of the Atlantic.

In both the U.S. and Canada, authorities are targeting Google’s ad business with lawsuits accusing the company of anticompetitive or monopolistic conduct in the digital ad industry, which they want to resolve by breaking up the company.

European Union regulators, meanwhile, have been carrying out their own antitrust investigation and signaled that they would push for Google to sell off parts of its business in order to satisfy concerns about its lucrative digital ad business.

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