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Search Competition

KGI’s work on search competition brings together experts from across economics, technology, law, and business to help advance and inform interventions to restore competition in the digital search market. Our work examines both high-profile antitrust litigation in the US and the development of novel ex-ante regulatory frameworks in Europe and the UK.

Search engines shape how billions of people find and access information and what voices get heard online. Google Search – the world’s dominant search engine – has faced mounting regulatory scrutiny and enforcement actions around the world over its anti-competitive practices designed to preserve its dominance across the web and devices. Search is a complex market where designing effective interventions requires grappling with questions related to large-scale data collection, advances in AI and other technological inputs, relationships with adjacent markets in mobile and on the web, and consumer behavior and decision-making in the market.

KGI’s work on search competition is focused on seeding and creating intellectual foundations for effective interventions amidst this complexity. Our work examines both high-profile antitrust litigation in the US and the development of novel ex-ante regulatory frameworks in Europe and the UK. 

We convene experts from across economics, technology, law, and business to produce novel insights. We also produce our own technical analyses. Key outputs have included: 

  • Considerations for Effective Search Competition Remedies, a 2024 report aimed at informing the design of remedies in the U.S. v. Google search antitrust litigation. The report synthesized the results of the Future of Search Competition Workshop, a private convening of experts focused on search.
  • The Technical Feasibility of Divesting Google Chrome, an in-depth technical report published in 2025 examining how a Chrome divestiture could be structured for success and demonstrating that an independent Chrome browser could effectively compete with other major browsers.

Latest Work

What US Lawsuits Reveal About Platform Design That DSA Reports Don’t

Commentary /

What US Lawsuits Reveal About Platform Design That DSA Reports Don’t

TikTok’s and Meta’s 2025 DSA risk assessments describe a range of risks and a multitude of mitigations addressing risks to minors: screentime management, parental controls, privacy-oriented design defaults, and restrictions on notifications. However, the risk assessments provide very little information about the level of risks and the effectiveness of chosen mitigations. Internal company documents released in US litigation, on the other hand, tell a different story.

Measuring Risk: What EU Risk Assessments and US Litigation Reveal About Meta and TikTok

Report /

Measuring Risk: What EU Risk Assessments and US Litigation Reveal About Meta and TikTok

Across the EU and US, two influential digital governance regimes are producing new evidence about how large social media companies assess and respond to potential risks on their platforms. KGI’s latest report compares Meta and TikTok’s EU risk assessments with internal documents emerging from US litigation, revealing significant gaps between public claims about risk mitigation and evidence of how these risks are actually addressed.

Age Assurance Online: A Technical Assessment of Current Systems and their Limitations

Report /

Age Assurance Online: A Technical Assessment of Current Systems and their Limitations

Governments around the world are adopting online age assurance requirements of different kinds, reshaping how digital services are accessed by adults and youth. KGI’s latest report provides a technical assessment of how age assurance systems work in practice and examines their accuracy, circumvention resistance, availability, and privacy implications.

Bringing Better Feeds to Life

Commentary /

Bringing Better Feeds to Life

Algorithms determine what we read, watch, and encounter online, and, increasingly, they also influence our offline lives. Yet algorithms are often built to maximize short-term engagement and capture attention, rather than to deliver long-term value to users. KGI’s new commentary takes a deep dive into the evolving landscape of recommender system design, highlighting six innovative trends that show it is possible to design better feeds that put people first.

Introducing Model Legislation for Better Algorithmic Feeds

Model Text /

Introducing Model Legislation for Better Algorithmic Feeds

Model legislation published by the Knight-Georgetown Institute provides a pathway for lawmakers who want to encourage better algorithmic feeds that put users’ interests front and center.

Seeing the Digital Sphere: The Case for Public Platform Data

Commentary /

Seeing the Digital Sphere: The Case for Public Platform Data

Should we be able to understand the risks kids face online? Understand how brands communicate with consumers? How politicians communicate online? These questions – and many more – can only be answered when public platform data is accessible. A new series by Tech Policy Press and the Knight-Georgetown Institute explores why public platform data matters, what threats researchers and journalists face trying to access this data, and how we can build a more transparent digital public sphere.

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