(Bloomberg) — South Africa’s Competition Commission, which has been probing online markets for the past 14 months, has provisionally found that Google Search’s practices distorts competition in Google’s favor.
“The inquiry provisionally recommends that paid results are prominently labeled as advertising with borders and shading to be clearer to consumers and that the top of the page is reserved for organic, or natural, search results based on relevance only, uninfluenced by payments,” the commission said in a statement.
The inquiry also recommended Google allows competitors to compete for prominence in a search by having their own specialist units and with no guaranteed positions for Google specialist units. It’s also exploring whether the default position of Google Search on mobile devices should end in South Africa.
Stakeholders and the public have six weeks to make submissions to the inquiry on the provisional findings and recommendations.
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