EU must ‘fully’ apply its market fairness rulebook on Google, search rivals urge

The European Union is once again being urged to expand its investigation of Google under the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA).

The big aim of the EU’s flagship competition reform — which came into force last spring — was to level the digital playing field by forcing platform giants into fairer dealing with rivals and users. But alternative search engines DuckDuckGo and Seznam.cz, along with a handful of regional consumer and civil society groups, are accusing Google of flouting the rules. In an open letter addressed to Commission EVPs Teresa Ribera and Henna Virkkunen, they urge the bloc to “fully” apply the DMA on Google.

DuckDuckGo has been complaining that Google’s DMA choice screen implementation and its approach to sharing click and query search data is non-compliant since at least last fall. But while the EU has an open probe on Google, the investigation relates to other aspects of the DMA — hence the push on Brussels to widen its oversight. An EU spokesperson confirmed receipt of the letter and told us it would reply in due course.

The letter’s timing looks notable since the bloc is also being pressed hard in the opposite direction by an aggressive Trump administration, which claims EU regulations like the DMA are unfairly singling out U.S. companies. So if the Commission forges ahead with DMA enforcement, there’s now the distinct threat that retaliatory tariffs could follow any sanctioning of U.S. Big Tech.