Google Faced With EU Antitrust Investigation Over Spam Policy

Pandu Nayak, Chief Scientist at Google Search (photo: x @Melinda_DS ·)

JAKARTA Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company, is again facing pressure from EU regulators after the European Commission officially opened an antitrust investigation into Google's spam policy. This step was taken following complaints from a number of news publishers who considered the policy to have harmed their income.

Google is known to have started tightening rules against the practice of gaming' search algorithms since March 2024. The policy, known as site reputation abuse policy', targets the practice of publishing third party pages on certain sites with the aim of utilizing the ranking of the main site so that it can rise to the results of the practic search which is often referred to as parasite SEO.

The European Commission said the results of their monitoring showed that Google's new policy caused a decline in news sites' rankings and other publishers in search results, especially if the site contained content from commercial partners.

"We are concerned that Google's policies do not provide fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory treatment to news publishers in the search results,"riabera, Head of EU Antitrust, said in a statement.

He added that this investigation aims to ensure news publishers do not lose important income amid the difficult times of the media industry, as well as ensure Google's compliance with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) 'new rules aimed at limiting the dominance of large technology companies.

In response to this, Google denies allegations by the European Commission. In its official statement, Pandu Nayak, Chief Scientist at Google Search, called the investigation a "misleading" step and potentially harming users in Europe.

"Investigation of our efforts to combat spam is baseless and can harm millions of users in Europe," wrote Nayak in a blog post.

He emphasized that Google's anti-spam policy aims to create a fair field by preventing sites from using fraudulent tactics to defeat competitors who produce original and quality content.

According to him, a court in Germany had previously rejected similar claims, stating that Google's anti-spam policy was "sah, reasonable, and consistently implemented."

Complaints against Google were filed by German media company ActMeraki in April 2025. They alleg that Google's spam policy has had a negative impact on legitimate sites.

Several large associations such as the European Publishers Council (EPC), the European Newspaper Publishers Association (ENPA), and the European Magazine Media Association (EMMA) also expressed similar concerns.

Under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), violations of the rules can be fined up to 10% of the company's total annual global revenue which means huge financial penalties for tech giants like Google.