The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is today proposing to designate Google with ‘strategic market status’ (SMS) in general search and search advertising. A final decision on SMS designation will be made by the deadline of 13 October.
"Early priority measures outlined in the roadmap include:
- Requiring choice screens to help people easily select and switch between search services (potentially including AI assistants)
- Ensuring fair and non-discriminatory ranking of search results
- More control and transparency for publishers over how their content collected for search is used, including in AI-generated responses and search results more generally
- Supporting data portability to help new businesses bring innovative products to market"
For Mojeek, obviously the first of these is important. On this the CMA says:
- "Presenting consumers with timely, clear and balanced choices about which
search services they use is an important driver of effective competition.
Some UK users are already presented with a choice screen to enable them
to select their default search engine when setting up Android devices for the
first time, while most users can in principle change their default search
engine after the device is set up either via browser or device settings. We
want to ensure that these choices are offered to as many users as possible,
at the right time, and with the information they need to support effective
choice by users. Such measures could pursue the statutory objective of
open choices. - We therefore expect to consult on imposing a choice screen obligation on
key access points, such as Chrome and Android, as part of our initial set of
CRs, building on the action already taken by Google to support consumer
choices in the UK and EU. As part of this, we will consider whether options
listed on choice screens should include AI assistants. We will also set high-
level principles for effective choice architecture to ensure Google displays
balanced and well-designed user interfaces."
In our view the current regime, driven by the EU, for Android choice screens has not helped competition much, and has been particularly unhelpful for Mojeek. We will be pointing this out and the case for multiple choice again, when we respond to the latest consultation (deadline 22 July). Your thoughts are most welcome.