By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Alphabet Google (NASDAQ ) faced calls on Wednesday for additional investigations into its compliance with historic European Union rules aimed at reining in Big tech.
Privacy-focused internet search engine DuckDuckGo, which research firm Statista said had a global market share of 0.54% in January this year, urged the European Commission to open three additional investigations.
Under the EU Digital Markets Law adopted in 2022, Google and six other technology companies must make it easier for users to switch to rival services and are prohibited from favoring their products on their platforms, among other obligations.
“The DMA has yet to reach 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 to comply,” Kamyl Bazbaz, senior vice president of public affairs at DuckDuckGo . , he wrote in a blog.
The world's most popular internet search engine is already the subject of two DMA investigations related to the rules of its Google Play app store and whether it discriminates against third-party services in Google search results.
Google, which has said it hopes to continue its compliance solutions within the DMA framework, had no immediate comment.
The Commission declined to comment on DuckDuckgo's allegations and said it was fully committed to ensuring implementation and compliance with the DMA.
Bazbaz said an investigation should focus on Google's proposal to license anonymized search data to rivals targeting European users, saying this data set likely excludes 99% of search queries, making them effectively useless to competitors.
“Google is trying to avoid its legal obligation in the name of privacy, which is ironic coming from the largest tracker on the Internet,” Bazbaz said.
He said Google should also be investigated for allegedly failing to comply with DMA obligations to allow users to easily switch to rival search engines.
If companies are found to have violated the DMA, this can cost them up to 10% of their global annual turnover.
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