Search engine rivals

DuckDuckGo urges EU investigations against Google

The search engine DuckDuckGo is demanding further investigations by the European Union (EU) against Google for possible violations of EU law. Google is accused of distorting competition.

"Launching formal investigations is the only way to force Google to comply with the rules," wrote DuckDuckGo's Head of Communications Kamyl Bazbaz in a blog post on Wednesday.

Dispute over data protection
One starting point would be the Alphabet subsidiary's proposal to sell certain anonymized search data to competitors. However, this would hardly be of any use. "Google is trying to evade its legal obligations in the name of data protection," added Bazbaz.

"This is not without a certain irony, as the company is the largest data collector on the internet." The US company is also disregarding the legal requirement to allow users to easily change their search engine.

According to Google, everything complies with the law
Google has always emphasized that it complies with the requirements of the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Among other things, this law obliges large technology companies to open up their platforms to competitors.

Violations can result in penalties of up to ten percent of annual global turnover. Google dominates the global market for internet searches and pockets the lion's share of the billions in advertising revenue.