EU opens probe of Google over news site rankings

The European Commission has opened a new investigation into Google over how the tech giant ranks media publishers’ content in search results under the EU’s big tech rulebook.

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) investigation on Google will assess whether it’s “demoting” news outlets and other publisher websites when they include sponsored or commercial material – a practice the tech giant has said is covered by its “site reputation abuse policy”.

Google argues that the policy is necessary as an anti-spam measure to tackle third-party pages that “abuse search rankings” by taking advantage of the host site’s ranking.

But the Commission said the new DMA probe will assess whether Google’s policy restricts publishers from doing business with third-party providers and monetising their websites and content.

“We will investigate to ensure that news publishers are not losing out on important revenues at a difficult time for the industry,” said the EU’s Competition Chief Teresa Ribera in a press statement.

A Commission official told reporters on Thursday that the investigation did not take issue with spam policies in general but was rather focused on how Google’s site reputation abuse policy may have affected its obligations to publishers.

Responding to the Commission’s announcement, Google defended the policy as “essential” to fight “deceptive pay-for-play” tactics that degrade search results.

“This surprising new investigation risks rewarding bad actors and degrading the quality of search results,” Google’s chief scientist Pandu Nayak, wrote in a blog post on Thursday.

If the Commission concludes that Google has breached the DMA, the company could be fined up to 10% of its worldwide turnover and may face further penalties for any ongoing infringement.

Separately, back in March, the Commission’s initial DMA investigations into Google reached a preliminary conclusion that it had breached the rules for self-preferencing on search and anti-steering on its Play app store.

However, so far, the company has not been issued with any fines.

(nl)