The European Union has once again turned its attention to Google, suspecting that the American tech giant may be illegally harming news outlets and publishers in its search results. The European Commission has opened a formal procedure to investigate whether one of Google’s policies —which allegedly lowers the visibility of multimedia content when websites include certain types of third-party commercial material— is affecting how news portals appear in Google Search.
The Commission’s Vice President, Teresa Ribera, expressed concern that these guidelines may prevent news publishers from receiving fair, adequate, and non-discriminatory treatment at a time when the industry is already facing economic challenges and relies heavily on digital traffic to sustain revenue. The core of the investigation is to determine whether Google is truly applying fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory access conditions for news publishers on its search platform, as required by the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Regulators suspect that under its so-called “Site Reputation Abuse Policy,”
Google may be interfering with a common and legitimate way for publishers to monetize content through partnerships with third parties. Google argues that the policy is intended to prevent attempts to manipulate search rankings, but the Commission’s monitoring suggests that the demotion of links and materials could be restricting publishers’ entrepreneurial freedom, limiting their innovative capacity, and disrupting essential commercial collaborations.
The inquiry will also examine how these algorithmic decisions might affect media pluralism and competition within the digital advertising market. Although opening the case does not yet prove any violation, the Commission aims to conclude the investigation within twelve months. If Google is found to have breached the rules, the company could face fines of up to ten percent of its worldwide annual revenue, and in cases of repeated infringement, penalties could reach twenty percent, along with more drastic structural measures, such as forcing the separation of certain business lines.
This would not be the first time Europe acts firmly: since 2018, Alphabet has already received several competition-related fines totaling around eight billion euros, including a record sanction linked to the Android operating system. The new investigation not only opens another front for Google in Europe but also revives the broader debate over the balance between the power of major tech platforms and the economic survival of the media organizations that produce the information.
