The UK has officially added its considerable weight to the growing global clampdown on Google’s market power. The decision by the Competition and Market Authority (CMA) to designate the company with “strategic market status” aligns the UK with parallel efforts in the United States and the European Union, creating a multi-front regulatory challenge for the tech giant.
This move is significant because it shows a convergence of opinion among the world’s leading economic powers that Google’s dominance in search requires intervention. As competition lawyer Tom Smith pointed out, “The US and the EU are already doing this,” and the UK’s action means it is no longer an outlier.
In the EU, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) has already imposed similar obligations on Google, such as the requirement to show choice screens. In the US, the Department of Justice is pursuing a major antitrust lawsuit that challenges the very deals that make Google the default search engine on so many devices.
By launching its own regime, the UK is ensuring that Google cannot escape regulatory pressure by playing jurisdictions off against each other. The company now faces a consistent and overlapping set of demands from its three largest Western markets.
This coordinated, if not formally allied, pressure makes it much more difficult for Google to resist change. It is one thing to fight a regulatory battle on a single front, but it is another entirely to face a sustained, multi-pronged assault on its core business model from the world’s most powerful regulators.