The UK’s action against Google represents a profound philosophical shift in its approach to technology: a move away from a pure “free market” ideology towards a more managed “fair market” system. The designation of Google with “strategic market status” is the clearest evidence of this new thinking.
The classic free market view, which has long influenced UK policy, is that the best company will naturally win, and regulators should interfere as little as possible. The assumption is that if a company like Google has 90% of the market, it’s because it offers the best product and consumers have freely chosen it.
The new “fair market” philosophy, embedded in the Digital Markets Act, challenges this assumption. It argues that in digital markets, the biggest company doesn’t just win; it can rewrite the rules of the game to make it impossible for anyone else to compete. Factors like default settings, data advantages, and network effects create an unlevel playing field that is not truly “free.”
The role of the regulator in this new philosophy is not to pick winners and losers, but to act as a groundskeeper, ensuring the playing field is level. The CMA’s proposed remedies are all examples of this: “choice screens” are about ensuring a fair start to the race, and “fair ranking” rules are about ensuring the referee (the algorithm) is not biased.
This is a more interventionist and pragmatic approach, born from the realization that the old hands-off model has resulted in unprecedented levels of market concentration. The UK is now asserting that for a market to be truly free, it must first be fair.
