The Guardian reports that the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, announced the investigation after monitoring found that certain content created by news media in partnership with advertisers and sponsors was being given such a low priority by Google that it was essentially invisible in search results. Officials said this potentially unfair “loss of visibility and of revenue” to media owners could be a result of an anti-spam policy Google operates.
Under the rules of the Digital Market Act (DMA), which governs competition in the tech sector, Google is required to apply “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory conditions of access to publishers’ websites on Google Search”. The Commission stressed that the investigation is not into the overall indexing of newspapers or their reporting on Google Search, but specifically focuses on commercial content provided by third parties.
Media partnerships with businesses selling goods or services, ranging from holidays to tennis shoes, are a “normal commercial practice in the offline world”, and officials believe they should also exist in a fair online marketplace such as Google. For example, if a newspaper partnered with Nike to offer discounts, evidence suggests that under a Google search, that sub-domain of the newspaper would be “demoted to a point that users will not be able to find it any more,” which in turn negatively impacts the newspaper.
Teresa Ribera, the executive vice president for clean, just and competitive transition policies at the European Commission, expressed concern that “Google’s policies do not allow news publishers to be treated in a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory manner in its search results.” The Commission will be asking publishers to submit evidence of any impacts to its traffic and revenues as a result of suspected breaches of fair practices in the coming days.
Google has hit back at the EU’s investigation, calling it “misguided” and “without merit.” In a blog post, the company stated that a German court has already dismissed a similar claim, ruling that their anti-spam policy was valid, reasonable, and applied consistently. Google maintains that the policy is designed to build “trustworthy results” and “fight deceptive pay-for-play tactics” that “degrade” its search listings.
The EU has emphasized the need to protect traditional media, which are now competing in the online marketplace, given the recent assertion by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that the media at large are at risk with the arrival of AI and widespread threats to media funding.
Officials clarified that the investigation is a “normal non-compliance” inquiry and although fines of up to 20 percent of revenue could be imposed, that would only be a possibility if Google was found to be practicing “systematic non-compliance.”
Read more at the Guardian here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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