European Commission Probes Google Over Potential Search Ranking Abuses

The announcement came Thursday, with officials saying they had detected indications that the policy may be lowering the visibility of publishers’ websites when they feature material from business partners. According to a statement from the Commission, the measures “appear to directly impact a common and legitimate way for publishers to monetise their websites and content.”

The inquiry will assess whether Google’s approach restricts publishers’ ability to “conduct legitimate business, innovate, and cooperate with third-party content providers.” Per a statement from the Commission, investigators will evaluate whether the policy interferes with standard commercial arrangements that many publishers rely on to generate revenue.

Google’s public documentation says the policy is intended to curb efforts to manipulate search rankings by embedding external content to exploit a site’s perceived authority. The company argues that such tactics distort the quality of search results.

Read more: EU Prepares New Investigation Into Google’s Treatment of News Publishers

Pandu Nayak, Google’s chief scientist of Search, pushed back strongly against the probe. “Unfortunately, the investigation announced today into our anti-spam efforts is misguided and risks harming millions of European users,” he wrote in a blog post Thursday. “And the investigation is without merit: a German court has already dismissed a similar claim, ruling that our anti-spam policy was valid, reasonable, and applied consistently.” He added, “Google’s anti-spam policy is essential to how we fight deceptive pay-for-play tactics that degrade our results. Our anti-spam policy helps level the playing field, so that websites using deceptive tactics don’t outrank websites competing on the merits with their own content.”

Should regulators determine that Google violated the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), the company could face fines of up to 10% of Alphabet’s worldwide annual revenue. If the Commission concludes that the breach is systematic, it also has the authority to impose additional remedies, including potential divestitures or restrictions on future acquisitions linked to the infraction.

Google Search was designated a “core platform service” under the DMA in 2023, granting EU regulators expanded oversight of the tech giant. It is already the subject of a separate investigation into alleged preferential treatment of its own services.

Source: EC Europa