The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has imposed binding conduct requirements on Google Search under its Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers regime. Key provisions include allowing publishers to opt out of having their content used to train Google's AI models without losing search visibility, mandating fair ranking and content attribution, and requiring default choice screens on Android and Chrome for rival search services. This marks the first enforcement action following Google's Strategic Market Status designation in October 2025. The CMA's regulatory model differs from US antitrust litigation by enabling ongoing, adjustable obligations rather than case-by-case court battles. The AI training opt-out is particularly significant as it attempts to decouple search indexing from AI data harvesting, addressing publishers' long-standing complaint that refusing Google's crawl means disappearing from search entirely.
