DuckDuckGo calls on European Commission to open investigations into Google DMA compliance

Internet search engine DuckDuckGo has asked the European Commission to open three investigations into Google’s compliance with the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA).

Kamyl Bazbaz, DuckDuckGo’s senior vice-president for public affairs, said investigations should be specifically conducted on the tech giant’s compliance on DMA’a Article 6.

The DMA is a piece of legislation enacted by the European Union to ensure fair and open competition in the digital sector, it is part of the EU’s broader strategy to regulate the digital economy and promote innovation, competition, and consumer choice.

Key points in DMA’s article 6 require Google to share anonymised click and query data, implement choice screens, and allow users to easily change default search settings. In addition, it requires Google to enable users to set search defaults easily on any downloaded search or browser app.

“The DMA has yet to achieve its full potential, the search market in the EU has seen little movement, and we believe launching formal investigations is the only way to force Google into compliance,” Bazbaz wrote in a blog, accusing Google of using a “malicious compliance playbook” to undercut the DMA.

According to Bazbaz, Google’s exclusive default distribution deals mean they see many times more search queries than any competitor can, which gives them what it’s called a “scale advantage.”

“The DMA created these obligations to address Google’s scale and distribution advantages, which the judge in the United States v. Google search case found to be illegal,” explained Bazbaz.

The lawsuit, filed in January 2023, accused Google of illegally monopolising the advertising technology market, violating sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

During the case, the judge specifically highlighted that 70 per cent of queries flowed through search engine access points preloaded with Google, creating a “perpetual scale and quality deficit” for rivals.

To comply with this requirement, earlier this year Google announced the Google European Search Dataset Licencing Program,.

However, Bazbaz said that the data set has “little to no utility” for competing search engines due to Google’s proposed anonymisation method, which only includes data from queries that have been searched more than 30 times in the last 13 months by 30 separate signed in users. 

“This method is conveniently overbroad; we extrapolate that Google’s dataset would omit a staggering ~99 per cent of search queries including “longtail” queries that are the most valuable to competitors. Google is trying to avoid its legal obligation in the name of privacy, which is ironic coming from the iInternet’s biggest tracker,” he explained.

Little has been done by Google on proving users with change default settings, Bazbaz continued.

“Despite this obligation of Google having to provide easy way for users to change default settings, switching search engines on Android devices (which make up more than 60 per cent of the mobile market in the EU is still not “easy,” he explained.

He added that before the DMA came into effect, it took more than 15 steps to switch your default search engine on Android and today that is still the case.

Google is already being investigated under the DMA for non-compliance of its app store related to rules and third-party discrimination on its search results’ services.

Google said it has been working with industry, experts and the Commission to comply with the DMA.