Europe to look at Google news 'relegation'

The European Commission is to investigate whether United States-based technology giant Google is unfairly relegating and deprioritizing news websites in user searches as a result of its anti-spam policy.

The executive body of the European Union says it has found "indications" news sources have been lowered in priority if they carry third-party promotional content, something the commission said was a "legitimate commercial practice" for news organizations, and as a consequence of what it called a "non-justified" application of Google policy, media outlets were suffering a "loss of revenue" and "loss of visibility".

EU officials say commercial partnerships would be considered acceptable in the world of print media, so for them to result in penalization from digital platforms is unfair.

The issue was first raised with the commission in April, by German media company ActMeraki, since when the European Publishers Council, the European Newspaper Publishers Association, and the European Magazine Media Association have all expressed similar concerns.

"Google continues to unilaterally set the rules of doing business online in its own favor, preferencing its own commercial offerings and depriving competing service providers of any visibility," ActMeraki's lawyer, Thomas Hoppner, was quoted as saying. "It is time to put an effective end to this."

The commission has invited companies to submit evidence of negative impacts on traffic and revenue that might be a consequence of such practices.

"We are concerned that Google's policies do not allow news publishers to be treated in a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory manner in its search results," said commission representative Teresa Ribera. "We 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."

The inquiry, which will focus on Google's parent company Alphabet, is expected to last around a year and will be the latest application of the EU's Digital Markets Act, or DMA, which came into effect in 2023 and that has put many US-based technology companies at loggerheads with European authorities, who have challenged the dominance of the digital giants. It also comes against a wider backdrop of strained relations between Washington and Brussels.

Since March 2024, Google has had what it calls a "site reputation abuse policy" that aims to combat efforts by websites hosting promotional content to play its ranking algorithm to get higher listings in search results and thus a greater chance of increased traffic.

Google's chief scientist for search, Pandu Nayak, called the inquiry "surprising" and "misguided" and added it was "risking harming millions of European users" and could "reward bad actors and degrade the quality of search results".

If Alphabet is found to be in breach of the rules of the DMA covering fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory practices, the company could potentially be fined up to 10 percent of its annual worldwide turnover.