“The decision to formally designate Google with Strategic Market Status is an important step to improving competition in digital markets,” argues Rocio Concha, director of policy and advocacy at UK consumer watchdog Which?. “Online search is evolving as gen AI tools become more widely used, but the CMA must still act to tackle the harmful dominance Google has now and to promote competition between gen AI search tools.”The CMA claims that Google Search accounts for more than 90 percent of all general search queries in the UK, and that over 200,000 firms in the UK collectively spent more than £10 billion ($13.3 billion) on Google search advertising in 2024. Google News, the company’s stand-alone news product, and AI chatbot Gemini are not affected, the CMA says. “The CMA may go further than the EU has done with the [Digital Markets Act], particularly with regards to restrictions relating to Google’s AI services and how they’re integrated into Google search,” he explains. So that’s one benefit of the UK digital markets regulation regime, particularly when you compare it to the situation in the EU, where these sorts of rules are fixed in the regulation itself.”