Google hit with EU probe into ranking of news publishers
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The news: The European Union has launched an investigation to assess whether Google’s search results ranks news publishers unfairly and could impede publishers from legitimately making money through third party content.
The context: The European Commission said that it is concerned that Google may be demoting news media and other publishers’ websites and content in Google search results when those websites include content from commercial partners. According to Google, this policy aims to tackle practices that are allegedly meant to manipulate ranking in search results.
Under Google's ‘site reputation abuse policy', the Commission explains, the tech giant appears to “directly impact a common and legitimate way for publishers to monetize their websites and content.”
“We will investigate to ensure that news publishers are not losing out on important revenues at a difficult time for the industry,” EU competition chief Teresa Ribera said in a statement.
The Commission’s investigation, opened under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), should run 12 months and could see Google face fines as high as 10% of the company’s global annual sales if any negative findings aren’t addressed. Fines can increase to 20% in case of repeated infringement.
Google Search’s chief scientist, Pandu Nayak, wrote in a blog post on Thursday: “The investigation announced today into our anti-spam efforts is misguided and risks harming millions of European users.” Google says the policy helps prevent paid-for third-party material on publishers’ websites from appearing higher up on search results than is warranted.
The source: European Commission
