The South African Competition Commission has found that Google Search’s practices distort competition in Google’s favour, and as such have proposed some radical changes to Google’s Search Results in SA.
The premise behind the probing by the Competition Commission is that the Google raises platform customer acquisition costs and favours large, often global platforms through the prevalence of paid search at the top of the search results page without adequate identifiers as advertising.
Imposed changes to Google Search
The changes imposed by the Competition Commission include forcing Google to make it clearer to SA users which search results are paid for. Additionally, Google may also be forced to end its status as the default search engine on smartphones sold in South Africa.
As said by the Competition Commission in a statement:
“The inquiry provisionally recommends that paid results are prominently labelled as advertising with borders and shading to be clearer to consumers and that the top of the page is reserved for organic, or natural, search results based on relevance only, uninfluenced by payments.”
Although these proposed changes take direct aim at the centre of Google’s business model, Google says that it will work constructively with South Africa’s Competition Commission; albeit to answer their questions as opposed to make changes to how Google presents search results in SA.
