The UK’s competition watchdog opened its second investigation into Google’s advertising tactics on Thursday, alleging that the Alphabet-owned (GOOGL.O) search engine is distorting competition and favouring its own services illegally.
The Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) latest investigation follows the CMA’s earlier investigation into Google and Facebook owner-(FB.O) Meta’s “Jedi Blue” deal.
Governments all across the world are tightening regulations on US tech behemoths, which have grown even more powerful as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Multiple investigations into their market positions are underway around the world, particularly in the United States and the European Union.
Last year, the United Kingdom enacted a new competition framework to prevent Google and Facebook from abusing their market dominance to drive out smaller businesses and disadvantage customers.
The measure established a special Digital Markets Unit under the CMA, which might be given authority to suspend, block, and reverse technology corporations’ decisions, as well as apply financial penalties for non-compliance.
Companies were warned that they needed to be more honest about how they used customer data, and that their advertising strategies needed to adapt to shifting expectations regarding data collection and usage.
Since Google owns the main supplier in each of those components, the CMA announced on Thursday that it was looking into three important pieces of the ad tech stack chain, or services that mediate ad tech.
