On February 25, the News/Media Alliance filed comments with the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) regarding its proposed conduct requirements to address Google’s strategic market status in general search and search advertising services, following the CMA’s October 2025 designation of Google’s status.
The proposed conduct requirements include providing publishers with more control and transparency over Google’s use of publisher content in its Search Artificial Intelligence (AI) features and broader AI services, as well as Google’s application of its ranking and spam policies on publisher websites. NMA commended the CMA’s aims behind the proposed conduct requirements, while offering concrete suggestions for improvement, filling in material gaps and closing loopholes that threaten both the requirements’ effectiveness and the sustainability of high-quality journalism. In particular, NMA recommended splitting up Googlebot, instead of relying solely on Google-designed crawler controls. NMA also called for standardized and granular controls across features, products, and services – including page- and feature-level controls for search, training, grounding, and fine-tuning, as well as for future features, to ensure publishers of all sizes can meaningfully and effectively control the use of their content.
To ensure ongoing effectiveness, NMA also provided a number of transparency and monitoring proposals, including establishing an independent oversight board with publisher participation to work with Google to develop and evolve publisher controls. The comments also note that the proposed fair ranking conduct requirements should provide more descriptive obligations, including regarding Google’s complaint handling processes and resolution of manual notices. Read the full comments here.
