As Google Faces Review in UK Over Market Power, Independent News Demands Fair Deal

In January this year, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the UK announced it was investigating Google for having a ‘Strategic Market Status’ (SMS), including in the area of “general search services,” essentially, legal shorthand for Google’s search monopoly.

The move follows the passage of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act in 2024, which gives the UK’s competition authority new powers to identify and investigate firms it believes to have outsized market control, and put in place measures to counteract that dominance and create a fairer marketplace.

The CMA is expected to issue its final decision on Google’s designation in October, at which point it will also outline the scope for remedial measures. Following this, affected parties (for example, news publishers) can make use of “collective bargaining” powers and negotiate with Google not only for financial compensation but also for “conduct requirements” around search functionalities to rebalance the market ecosystem.

According to the figures quoted by the CMA, Google search accounts for upwards of 90% of all general search queries in the country, with an average person making between five and ten searches per day.

But the concerns go beyond Google’s dominance in search and the limited pathways for alternative search engines to succeed. It is also that the company's outsized position gives it disproportionate control over the information ecosystem, disadvantaging, among other sectors, the news industry that has come to depend on its services.

Central to this argument is the claim that Google profits from online news content by publishers — using it to drive digital advertising, fuel AI overviews, and train its AI models. In return, many in the news and publishing industry say they should be fairly compensated. The call for payments has gained urgency amid growing concerns that the digital ecosystem is not working for news businesses.

In response, Google downplayed the value of news to its services. A Google spokesperson told the Citizens and Tech Policy Press that a public experiment conducted in Europe showed that “people visited Google only slightly less often when news content was removed,” and that it “did not significantly change” Google’s ad revenue.

Google’s approach to measuring the value of news, however, appears relatively narrow. Notably, the company does not account for how this content is monetized through AI training, or consider the contribution of news to the development of its search functionality.

“[Google] has created an unfair market that makes it more difficult for new entrants to enter the market, and for existing ones to innovate and grow and operate fairly. The independent news in particular is on its last legs and there could be an ultimate market failure that sees news collapse in the UK,” said Lexie Kirkconnell Kawana, CEO of Impress, an independent press monitor in the UK. She is part of an independent media coalition in talks with the CMA on the Google investigation.

Highlighting just how grave the impact of Google’s search algorithms and recent introduction of AI overviews has been on independent publishers, Chris Dicker, CEO of Candr Media Group, an independent media business, said, “Some independent publishers have seen hits of over 50% since April. How do you lose half your [audience] since April and expect to adapt? It’s impossible. We’ve had people who have lost 90% of their traffic in 12 months.”

Dicker is also on the board of the Independent Publishers Alliance, another organization lobbying the CMA. He explains that AI overviews, AI-generated summaries appearing on top of searching results, are driving down website traffic rapidly and causing a “crocodile effect.”

“Right now what sites are seeing… [is that] the impressions are increasing, so that is how often they’re appearing in searchers. It could be [through mentions] in the AI overview, for example. But clicks to the sites are decreasing. Where impressions and clicks have always mirrored in analytics, they’re starting to open up like a crocodile,” he adds.

In response to claims of traffic reduction, a Google spokesperson told us, “we’ve seen a lot of speculation and inaccurate claims made about traffic from Search, often based on highly incomplete and skewed data. The reality is that sites can gain and lose traffic for a variety of reasons, including seasonal demand, interests of users, and regular algorithmic updates to Search.”

Google also claims that the volume is less important, and those that click through to a site from AI-generated results are a “more highly qualified visitor.” However, a study published by Ahref in June 2025, which analyzed traffic to more than 80,000 sites from AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Gemini, found the opposite. According to the research, traffic from AI sources was of lower quality compared to regular search visits, with higher bounce rates and lower pages per visit; metrics that are critical from a publisher’s perspective.

Google versus news: A global overview

These challenges are not unique to the UK, nor is it the first country to be exploring the idea of making Big Tech pay for news.

Countries like Canada and Australia have already seen financial agreements struck between digital platforms and news publishers, though the way these were implemented was less than ideal, particularly for smaller, independent publishers.

In Australia, the legal framework was never fully put into practice. In 2021, the News Media Bargaining Code was brought in, allowing news organizations to enter into deals with Big Tech companies. If the negotiations fail, the law gives the Treasurer the power to designate tech firms to comply with the code’s obligations when there is a “significant bargaining power imbalance” between them and Australian news businesses. But so far, no companies have been designated under this law.

While Google and Meta entered into deals with Australian news publishers worth AU$200 million in 2021 — albeit through a rather opaque process — come 2025, both Google and Meta are refusing to renew these payments.

Following this, the Australian government has now decided to introduce a “news bargaining incentive,” which will force companies like Meta, Google, and TikTok to either strike deals with news companies or be forced to pay a fixed charge to the government. The aim is to incentivize platforms to reach direct agreements and not withdraw news content altogether.

In Canada’s case, a fund called the Canadian Journalism Collective was established, to which Google agreed to make payments of C$100 million annually. These funds are to be distributed to Canadian news businesses based on a “per-journalist basis,” according to David Buttle, a media consultant. If Google fails to comply with the agreement, the law allows for an “arbitration mechanism” to kick in, which would compel the company to pay for news content appearing in its search results.

In both countries, the measures have focused solely on financial compensation and do not address the platform mechanics that allow for Google and other tech giants to maintain their dominance, which ultimately dictates how news is consumed. In Australia’s case, the direct deals have drawn criticism for disproportionately benefiting major media outlets over independent ones, at least to begin with.

Another limitation in both cases is that competition regulators have not had the chance to actually step in and facilitate fair negotiations across the industry. This has meant that some companies have been able to sidestep the laws.

Meta, for instance, has refused to make any deals with news businesses in Canada, pulling news entirely from its platforms in the country. “This has had devastating consequences for many communities in Canada that had come to rely on Facebook in particular as a news source,” said Kirkconnell Kawana.

In comparison to the two legislative frameworks, particularly Australia’s, which she refers to as “ghost legislation,” Kirkconnell Kawana says that the UK is in a much stronger position. This is because rather than push for direct deals, the CMA is working to formally designate these companies and establish a process for fair negotiation, which would allow it to go beyond short-term financial compensation.

And Google is only the first company to face an SMS designation. The CMA has also announced investigations into Apple and is expected to examine Meta as well; this is because the law is broad in scope and extends to sectors outside of the news media.

Another notable aspect of the UK's approach is the active involvement of independent publishers who have been at the forefront of this conversation since the very beginning, having had the chance to respond to CMA’s guidance as it is being crafted.

Kirkconnell Kawana says that the direct deals approach in other countries led to a certain opaqueness that disadvantaged independent publishers. “We don’t know what’s contained in those deals. We don’t have the assurance that public interest journalism is going to be preserved. That there is going to be sustainability for the sector overall, because whatever is negotiated is between two big power brokers, Big Media and Big Tech.”

So far, the UK appears to have not made this mistake. But Dicker warns this risk still looms large; that ultimately “Big Tech will do what they do and go off and do direct deals with large news organisations fairly quickly.”

Independent media sees progress, but uncertainty still looms large

Beyond monetary compensation, the framework put forth by the CMA allows news publishers to ask Big Tech to implement “content requirements.”

This includes measures like “fair ranking principles,” which could involve upranking and downranking certain kinds of websites, to make sure quality journalism gets preference. Currently, Google’s pay-for-ads system means that sponsored content shows up at the top of results, irrespective of the quality of the information. So, news stakeholders hope that a fair ranking would enable “prioritisation of verified, high-quality journalism,” wherein search can focus on promoting good information rather than having to moderate and remove bad ones. Another measure would be the creation of a more robust complaints process, enabling news publishers to raise concerns about search visibility directly with Google.

The independent news publishers are also calling for greater transparency, including measures that could help illuminate Google’s “black box” algorithms, which remain largely opaque in how they determine search rankings.

The CMA, meanwhile, is also looking to push Google to create space for alternative search engines, a proposal being referred to as “choice screens”.

All these measures are currently part of the CMA’s draft guidance and will be the subject of negotiations expected to happen in the next 18 months.

“Because we have for such a long time now had such a deregulatory approach, lack of enforcement of competition rules, lack of enforcement of copyright interests, we’ve led ourselves to this wild west, where a big player can come along, operate as they see fit, ignore our interests as consumers, as the state, as other businesses operating in this economy,” says Kirkconnell Kawana.

News stakeholders have made it clear they are concerned about the potential for Big Tech to engage in bullying tactics. In the past, these companies have threatened, and in some cases followed through, to exit markets or pull services when confronted with new regulations.

The fact that the negotiations are not expected to finish until the end of 2026 also adds to the volatility of the situation. Some measures will not take effect for over a year, which worries those in the independent news business who have already seen significant revenue losses.

Adding to this concern, the CMA is currently excluding Gemini AI, and potentially YouTube and Google Discover from the scope of these anti-competitive measures. Many from the independent news businesses view this as short-sighted.

In a joint submission to the CMA on its guidance, a UK Independent news coalition (comprising of the Independent Media Association, Independent Community News Network, Association of Online Publishers and the Independent Publishers Alliance) warned that leaving out these Google services will create “an artificial and potentially problematic distinction, one that risks undermining the effectiveness of the regime as AI capabilities are increasingly embedded into the search experience.”

The coalition argues that the exclusion of these AI-driven search services and other related platforms would place “undue cost burdens on UK publishers” who will be forced to track the impact of these services separately and lead to “regulatory gaps.”

“Google’s strategic market status is not a monolithic phenomenon—it is composite, built upon tightly interlinked platforms,” they add.

This piece is being published in collaboration with the Citizens Reunited; a newsletter from the Citizens, a UK-based not-for-profit journalism and campaigning organisation with a focus on technology and politics.