The European Commission earlier today launched an investigation into Google over an alleged breach of the Digital Market Act regarding the treatment of publisher's websites on its search engine results. According to monitoring reports from the commission, Google is demoting websites and content in its search result if those websites include content from commercial partners, as stated under its "Site Reputation Abuse Policy." Google claims this policy is aimed at tackling practices that exploit the reputation of high quality sites for promoting low quality content.

The investigation will focus on whether Google's 'Site Reputation Abuse Policy' as alleged, unfairly manipulates website rankings in search results. This investigation is expected to operate within 12 months, during which the commission will impose fines of 10% of Google's total worldwide turnover if an infringement is confirmed. If cases of repeated violations, the fine could climb to 20%. If the infringement is systematic, the commission will oblige Google to either sell the business/ part of it or ban Google from acquiring related services.

Teresa Ribera, Executive Vice President for clean, just and complete transition stated:

"Today we are taking action to ensure that digital gatekeepers do not unfairly restrict businesses that rely on them from promoting their own products and services. We are concerned that Google’s policies do not allow news publishers to be treated in a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory manner in its search results. We will investigate to ensure that news publishers are not losing out on important revenues at a difficult time for the industry, and to ensure Google complies with the Digital Markets Act."

In response, Pandu Nayak, Chief scientist for Search at Google, wrote in a blog post that a similar claim was dismissed by a German court, which ruled that the policy was valid, reasonable, and applied consistently. He stated:

"The investigation announced today into our anti-spam efforts is misguided and risks harming millions of European users."

He further explained:

"A spammy may pay a publisher's website, taking advantage of the publisher's good ranking in a ln effort to trick users into clicking on low quality content."