Google has been given strategic market status in general search and search advertising, prompting the internet’s most powerful answer machine to discover that the question “what does this mean?” has several sponsored results and no immediate consequences.
The Competition and Markets Authority confirmed the designation after an investigation, consultation and feedback from more than 80 stakeholders. The decision says Google has substantial and entrenched market power in search, where more than 90% of UK searches take place on its platform. It also says the designation is not a finding of wrongdoing and introduces no immediate requirements, which is a reassuring way to give a giant company a new official status without asking it to move its elbows.
Strategic market status is part of the UK’s digital markets competition regime, designed to support targeted and proportionate action. The CMA expects to consult on possible interventions later in the year. Until then, the market can enjoy the traditional regulatory experience of being carefully examined while remaining exactly where it was.
“This is a significant classification,” said Petra Querywell, Senior Curator of Search Terms. “It places Google in a special category between ‘too important to ignore’ and ‘please continue as normal while we prepare a roadmap’.”
The designation covers general search and search advertising. Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode are within scope, while its Gemini AI assistant is not, although that position may be reviewed as the market develops. This gives the internet a useful new distinction between the machine that answers your question, the machine that summarises the answer and the machine that may eventually be asked to explain why none of them has fixed the wording.
The CMA says the new regime could help businesses and consumers by encouraging effective competition and fair treatment. The Office of Official Results has therefore prepared a prominent notice explaining that competition is important, followed by six adverts, a map of nearby cafés and a box asking whether the user meant “competitive gardening”.
Google’s own search box has now been invited to reflect on its strategic position. It returned a leadership retreat, a consultancy package called Dominating Responsibly and a sponsored result for a course teaching smaller search engines how to accept their place in the ecosystem.
The CMA has not pressed the big red “fix internet” button. It has placed that button under consultation, commissioned a roadmap for its possible future consideration and ranked the button below an advert for cloud storage. The regulator may yet intervene, but for now Google has achieved the rare status of being officially too powerful to hurry. Somewhere inside the search box, the word “later” is now enjoying more market power than the answer.
Real story: Competition and Markets Authority.
