The European Commission has launched an investigation to determine whether Google has violated EU Regulation 2022/1925 on fair and contestable markets in the digital sector, known as the “Digital Markets Act” (DMA).
The DMA imposes a series of obligations on companies that provide core platform services, have a significant impact on the internal market, and enjoy an entrenched and durable position in their operations (gatekeepers).
Among these, of particular importance are the obligations to apply fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory general conditions of access for business users to their app stores, search engines, and social network services, and not to treat more favourably, in ranking and indexing, services and products offered by the gatekeepers themselves than similar services or products of third parties.
The Commission's investigation aims to verify whether the ‘site reputation abuse policy’ adopted by Alphabet to combat practices aimed at manipulating Google Search results has led to the systematic downgrading of publishers' web pages hosting content provided by commercial partners.
If a violation of the DMA is found, Google could be fined 10% of its total worldwide turnover (which could be increased to 20% in the event of a repeat offense).
(Fabrizia Serpieri)
