UK competition agency launches investigation into how Google and Facebook collect and use user data and if they've abused their power to dominate the ad market
Mark Sweney / The Guardian :
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2019 launch by the UK competition agency is the opening move in what became a multi-year escalation against the ad-data duopoly. Within five months the EU antitrust regulator opened its own preliminary investigations into how Google and Facebook gather, process, and monetize data for advertising — evidence that the UK study set a template other regulators copied.
First-order effects
- Google and Facebook now face formal evidence-gathering on whether their data collection entrenches dominance of the UK ad market, with advertisers and publishers as the affected parties whose conduct and pricing the agency will scrutinize.
Second-order effects
- The UK probe pressures rivals to respond in kind: the EU launched parallel preliminary investigations months later, and by 2021 the CMA was [[a:964361|preparing a dedicated antitrust case over Facebook allegedly using customer data to squash competitors]].
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, market studies harden into enforcement: the same agency returned in 2025 to test whether Google holds strategic market status in search, showing the UK shifting from asking whether ad-data power is abused to building standing regimes that can bind it.
The trend: Competition regulators are escalating from one-off studies of ad-data dominance toward durable designation regimes that treat Google's and Facebook's data advantages as ongoing, regulable market power.