Cape Town - The Competition Commission has made recommendations that could potentially lead to changes to Google search results in South Africa.
This after the commission’s Digital Markets Inquiry provisional report singled out the internet giant for a lack of transparency around paid search results.
Among other findings, the inquiry has provisionally found that Google Search plays an important role in directing consumers to the different platforms, and in this way shapes platform competition.
Competition Commission spokesperson Siyabulela Makunga said: “The prevalence of paid search at the top of the search results page without adequate identifiers as advertising raises platform customer acquisition costs and favours large, often global, platforms.”
Makunga said preferential placement of their own specialist search units also distorts competition in Google’s favour.
He said the inquiry recommended that paid results are prominently labelled as advertising with borders and shading to be clearer to consumers and that the top of the page is reserved for organic, or natural, search results based on relevance only, uninfluenced by payments.
The inquiry also recommended Google allows competitors to compete for prominence in a search by having their own specialist units and with no guaranteed positions for Google specialist units.
The inquiry report said the commission would be exploring whether the default position of Google Search on mobile devices should end in South Africa.
The provisional report comes after 14 months of evidence gathering, public hearings, and in-camera hearings into online intermediation platforms including eCommerce, app stores, travel and accommodation platforms, food delivery, and online classifieds.
The purpose of the inquiry was to identify market features that have adverse effects on competition among platforms, between businesses using these platforms, and the participation of SMEs and historically disadvantaged persons as both platforms and business users. The report came as representatives of over 80 civil society organisations gathered to launch a new organisation, Friends of a Free Internet.
One of the group’s spokespersons, Mark Weinberg, said: “The actual costs of providing internet services must be paid in the same way end-users enjoy roads and libraries for free. The internet is a public good. We should not pay for the massive profits that the corporations are extracting from the public.”
People’s Media Consortium spokesperson Erna Curry said internet access was a fundamental right that enabled other rights and served as an economic multiplier, creating decent jobs and delivering services to address South Africa’s deepening social and economic crisis.
“Yet over 40% of people still have no internet access and only 8.3% of households have access to high-speed broadband and the vast majority remain a hostage of MTN, Vodacom, Telkom & CellC.”
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za