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.
