A new study by marketing data firm Searchmetrics has discovered that Google Shopping has effectively ceased trying to increase competition after Brexit.
Five years after the EU commission fined Google 2.4 billion euros (2bn) and ordered it to open its Google Shopping service in Europe to external competition, data has found that around 53% of ads on the UK platform still originate from Google itself.
This is around a 49% increase on the numbers collected in 2019, with Searchmetrics research indicating that after Brexit, Google has stopped actively trying to increase competition.
Additionally, the research suggests that most of the external participants on Google Shopping are not providers of genuine comparison-shopping services which Google’s action was intended to benefit. Many are marketing agencies that have emerged after Google’s fine.
The EU ruled in its 2017 antitrust suit that Google was giving itself an ‘unfair advantage’ by promoting its own ads on the platform over those from rival comparison shopping websites which help consumers compare different products and prices to make informed purchasing decisions.
Searchmetrics researchers reviewed over one million Google Shopping ad units across the UK and Germany to analyse how the tech giant is complying with the EU’s call to introduce greater competition onto the platform.
By comparing the results to its previous studies, Searchmetrics concludes that Google had to some extent initially attempted to increase external...
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