Privacy-oriented search engine DuckDuckGo has called on the European Union to expand its Digital Markets Act investigation into Google, saying the search giant is violating several areas where the bloc has yet to formally scrutinize the company's behavior.

The EU's flagship market contestability rulebook has been in force on a handful of tech giants since March, including Google. Fines for failing to abide by DMA rules that mandate things like platform access on FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms can reach up to 10% of global annual turnover on paper. So it's not a regulation Big Tech can just ignore.

However we’ve yet to see any sanctions land, despite months of competitors accusing major platforms of flouting the law — or, at best, engaging in so-called “malicious compliance.”

In a blog post published Wednesday, DuckDuckGo Senior Vice President for Public Affairs Kamyl Bazbaz set out several fresh charges, starting with accusing Google of a self-serving narrow interpretation of a DMA requirement to avoid sharing “click-and-query” data that could help competitors.

The "Google European Search Dataset Licensing Program," which was the company's response to the legal requirement to share click-and-query data, yields a dataset that DuckDuckGo says "has little to no utility to competing search engines" — largely, it argues, as a result of Google's choice of anonymization method, which means only data from queries that have been searched more than 30 times in the last 13 months by 30 separate-signed-in users are included.

"This approach is conveniently overbroad," DuckDuckGo wrote, suggesting that Google's dataset "would omit a staggering ~99% of search queries including 'longtail' queries that are the most valuable to competitors."

"Google is trying to avoid its legal obligation in the name of privacy, which is ironic coming from the internet's biggest tracker," its blog post added. 

The Commission has outlined several abuses of DMA gatekeepers and is enforcing non-compliance proceedings, such as an investigation into Google's self-preferencing that got underway at the end of March. But the EU's DMA probe of the search giant hasn't produced additional public statements, unlike in other Commission investigations against Apple and Meta, where this summer the EU found preliminary breach findings.

Resource constraints might be another reason why the EU has not gained the speed that some had so eagerly anticipated. The DMA is in fact an ex-ante reform of competition policy which some expected would even be self-executing, because it imposes up-front rules on tech giants in scope.

However, while this year saw waves of changes introduced by platforms, which they brandish as DMA compliance, many of their rivals were unconvinced, labeling Big Tech's gestures as a play to escape actual compliance with the law's purpose and adding pressure on the Commission to act.

Meanwhile, the EU has scarce resources to carry out this centralized enforcement. And perhaps not spreading its staffers too thin might explain why we haven't seen more-formal proceedings opened.

Choice screens haven't eased the process of switching
DuckDuckGo's blog post lists two further complaints against Google that it's urging the Commission to investigate related to choice screens the regulation has forced the tech giant to implement in the EU in relation to its eponymous search engine and Chrome browser.

The DMA calls for Google to make it simple for users to switch to rivals' products as defaults from its own search and browser. And as a response to this obligation, the company has introduced choice screens in the EU. However, DuckDuckGo argues that it hasn't delivered on what the regulation requires as it says it's still too arduous for users to switch.

"Before the DMA came into effect, it took more than 15 steps to switch your default search engine on Android, and today that is still the case," Bazbaz wrote.

DuckDuckGo says the same thing holds true for Chrome. "Google has outright ignored its obligations to make it easy to switch under the DMA," he argued. "As a result, we believe the Commission must launch a non-compliance investigation to get Google to fulfil its requirements under the law. 'Easy switching' should mean competition is actually one click away.

Discussing the impact of the Google search choice screen on DuckDuckGo's regional market share, Bazbaz told TechCrunch that it is "definitely" seeing an increase in downloads on Android devices as a result of an improved design following the DMA coming into effect. Still, he said the impact on DuckDuckGo's total install base remains "marginal," since it hasn't been rolled out yet to all Google default users on Android.

So few users actually see it, and it's not a permeant setting that facilities easy switching," he explained, adding: "Compare that to the search engine choice screen rolled out on Chrome to their entire EEA [European Economic Area] user-base and we saw a 75% increase in search queries coming through Chrome."

The Commission has in fact imposed choice screens on Android since well before the DMA through classical enforcement of competition against Google's mobile platform going back to 2018.

In that case, it took years of competitor complaints, and finally direct pressure from the EU, before Google ditched a pay-to-play auction for filling slots on the choice screen that rivals had warned fatally undermined the mechanism. Hence Google's regional market share for search remained much the same.

The upshot is that the Commission should be aware of Google's tactics aimed at undermining the effect of remedies directed towards competition. Still, DuckDuckGo's point is EU enforcers risk looking asleep at the wheel again. And that is precisely what the DMA was supposed to avoid.

"We have raised these issues with the Commission before privately and they indicated they are taking them seriously and looking into them," Bazbaz also told TechCrunch. "That said, we believe launching formal investigations is likely the only way to force Google into compliance."

To comply both with the letter and the spirit of the DMA, we've consulted far and wide with industry, experts, and the European Commission and made significant changes to our products," said Emily Clarke, a Google spokesperson. "This includes giving consumers and businesses even greater choices about what services they use. When consumers use our services, they expect their data to be protected.". We will not compromise that trust in order to give competitors more access to sensitive data."

Commission spokeswoman Lea Zuber said the EU would not comment on specific complaints but added general remarks, saying it is "fully committed to ensuring the implementation and enforcement of the DMA.