\n<\/p>\n
The EU has opened an investigation into Google Search over concerns the US tech company has been \u201cdemoting\u201d commercial content from news media sites.<\/p>\n
The bloc\u2019s executive arm announced the move after monitoring found that certain content created with advertisers and sponsors was being given such a low priority by Google that it was in effect no longer visible in search results.<\/p>\n
European Commission officials said this potentially unfair \u201closs of visibility and of revenue\u201d to media owners could be a result of an anti-spam policy Google operates.<\/p>\n
Under the rules of the Digital Market Act (DMA), which governs competition in the tech sectors, Google must apply \u201cfair, reasonable and non-discriminatory conditions of access to publishers\u2019 websites on Google Search\u201d.<\/p>\n
Commission officials said the investigation was not into the overall indexing of newspapers or their reporting on Google Search, just into commercial content provided by third parties.<\/p>\n
Media partnerships with businesses selling goods or services ranging from holidays to trainers were \u201cnormal commercial practice in the offline world\u201d and they should also exist in a fair online marketplace such as Google, officials said.<\/p>\n
For example a newspaper may have teamed up with Nike to offer discounts, but there was evidence that under a Google search, that sub-domain of the newspaper would be \u201cdemoted to a point that users will not be able to find it any more\u201d. That in turn affects the newspaper.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are concerned that Google\u2019s policies do not allow news publishers to be treated in a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory manner in its search results,\u201d said Teresa Ribera, the executive vice-president for clean, just and competitive transition policies at the European Commission.<\/p>\n
Officials will ask 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, the commission said.<\/p>\n
Ribera added: \u201cWe will investigate to ensure that news publishers are not losing out on important revenues at a difficult time for the industry, and to ensure Google complies with the Digital Markets Act.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday we are taking action to ensure that digital gatekeepers do not unfairly restrict businesses that rely on them from promoting their own products and services.\u201d<\/p>\n
Google hit out at the EU\u2019s investigation, calling it \u201cmisguided\u201d and \u201cwithout merit\u201d.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n
Sign up to Business Today<\/span><\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n It said in a blogpost: \u201cUnfortunately, the investigation announced today into our anti-spam efforts is misguided and risks harming millions of European users.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n It said the policy was designed to build \u201ctrustworthy results\u201d and \u201cfight deceptive pay-for-play tactics\u201d that \u201cdegrade\u201d Google Search listings.<\/p>\n The EU said it was compelled to take steps to protect traditional media, which were now competing in the marketplace online, given the recent assertion by the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, in her state of the union address that the media at large were at risk with the arrival of AI and widespread threats to media funding.<\/p>\n Officials stressed the investigation was a \u201cnormal non-compliance\u201d inquiry and although fines of up to 20% of revenue could be imposed, that would only be a possibility if Google was found to be practising \u201csystematic non-compliance\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The EU has opened an investigation into Google Search over concerns the US tech company has been \u201cdemoting\u201d commercial content from news media sites. The bloc\u2019s executive arm announced the move after monitoring found that certain content created with advertisers and sponsors was being given such a low priority by Google that it was in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[695,1914,19094,2016,6226,205,150],"class_list":{"0":"post-33295","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-commercial","9":"tag-content","10":"tag-demotion","11":"tag-google","12":"tag-investigates","13":"tag-media","14":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}