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Four search engine rivals to Google have called on European Union lawmakers to address the tech giant’s continued dominance of the market by setting rules for search engine preference menus, arguing that the tech giant’s ability to set damaging defaults is continuing to limit how easily consumers can switch to non-Google alternatives.
In an open letter today, the non-tracking search engines DuckDuckGo and Qwant, along with tech-for-good focused Lilo and tree-planting not-for-profit Ecosia, urge the region’s lawmakers to go further to tackle the platform giants’ market power.
“The DMA [Digital Markets Act] urgently needs to be adapted to prevent gatekeepers from suppressing search engine competition,” they write. “Specifically, the DMA should enshrine in law a requirement for a search engine preference menu that would effectively ban Google from acquiring default search access points of the operating systems and the browsers of gatekeepers. Moreover, the DMA should ensure that, in addition to selecting their preferred search default in initial onboarding, consumers are able to one-click switch at any time via prompts from competing search engine apps or websites. These actions would finally lead to significant implications for competition in the search engine market and ensure there is real consumer choice online.”
The Commission presented the Digital Markets Act at the end of last year — proposing a fixed set of ex ante rules for so-called internet “gatekeepers” with the aim of ensuring that these intermediating internet giants cannot abuse their power to crush competitors and squeeze consumers.
However the four Google search rivals say the proposed legislation doesn’t currently contain any measures that will help break the tech giant’s continued dominance of search in Europe (where it has around 93%) — hence their call for EU lawmakers to make amendments to add binding rules for search preference screens so that consumers always have an effortless ability to switch their default search engine choice, whether on mobile or desktop.
While the Commission was responsible for the original draft of the DMA, the EU’s other core institutions — the European Parliament and member states, via the EU Council — have to agree on the details so negotiations over the exact shape of the regulation are continuing.
“We welcome the Commission’s goals with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) but the DMA fails to address the most acute barrier in search: Google’s hoarding of default positions,” the four search rivals also write. “Google would not have become the overall market gatekeeper they are today without years of locking up these defaults. If the DMA fails to address this fundamental issue, we believe the status quo will continue, leaving the root cause of this problem unchanged.”
Google has been contacted for comment on the claims.
Back in 2018, the EU’s competition commission fined Google $5 billion over antitrust abuses in how it operates its Android smartphone platform.
Following that intervention the tech giant introduced a regional search preference screen that was shown on setting up a new Android smartphone in Europe. However Google quickly implemented a sealed bids auction model that required rivals to pay it (and outbid each other) to appear in one of the available slots, which competitors immediately decried as unfair and non-transparent.
