Research & Commentary

On September 2, US District Court Judge Amit Mehta issued an opinion that many in the tech industry had been waiting on for more than 15 years: a ruling about how to rectify Google’s maintenance of its illegal monopoly in online search. The most consequential aspect of the opinion is that the remedies will not meaningfully address the conduct at the center of the case: Google paying distributors like Apple, Samsung, and Mozilla tens of billions of dollars per year to lock in Google Search as the default on nearly every mobile phone and across much of the desktop browser market.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority has provisionally designated Google as having Strategic Market Status – a  step toward curbing the company’s dominance in online search. The Knight-Georgetown Institute finds evidence to support this designation and urges the UK to prioritize stronger interventions that address key barriers to entry in the search market.

The European Commission’s new guidelines to protect minors online mark a step forward in online child safety, offering recommendations for how platforms are designed, including limits on manipulative design techniques, defaults to maximize protection, more agency for children, and regular risk reviews.

Robust and comprehensive remedies in the US government’s Google search antitrust case would help prevent Google from leveraging its monopoly power in search to dominate the emerging market for generative AI products.

A new report by Ofcom, the UK’s communication services regulator, underscores the challenges researchers face in accessing platform data and proposes a roadmap to improve researcher’s access to data to support online safety.