EU demands more transparency from search engines

The European Commissioner for the Digital Market, Andrus Ansip, has announced that there are plans to oblige search engines, including Google, to disclose more information to users. This concerns topics such as advertisements and terms of use.

For example, search engines should provide more insight into how their advertising systems and paid reviews work. The plans are mainly aimed at Google, which has a market share of 90 percent in the European Union, according to The Wall Street Journal. In addition, the company should provide more clarity about repeatedly adjusting the terms of use of certain apps, such as Google Maps.

Major US tech companies, including Facebook and Amazon, feared that the EU wanted a single solution to regulate all web services. However, that doesn’t seem to be happening now. “We do not assume a horizontal approach, but a targeted one”, Ansip explained, “we have to solve all the problems separately.” It therefore seems that no new legislation is planned that is aimed at all internet service providers.

Another example of a targeted approach is the European plan to make comparison sites more transparent, for example by providing insight into their revenue model. Ansip also stated Friday that there is no plan to introduce a separate tax for hyperlinks. It would only be intended to clarify existing rules on the use of copyrighted material, for example in the event that a news aggregator posts pieces of news items without permission and makes money from it.