Economic power was
once measured most visibly through factories, physical distribution networks,
property, workforce scale and conventional market share. Increasingly, however,
commercial influence is exercised through digital platforms, algorithms, data
and interfaces that determine what consumers see, which businesses reach them
and how choices are presented. In 2024, the UK Digital and Technology sector
generated an estimated £408 billion of turnover and £158 billion of gross value
added.
That shift is
visible in everyday behaviour. The Office of Communications (Ofcom) reported
that UK adults spent an average of four-and-a-half hours online each day in
2025, with Alphabet and Meta services accounting for 51% of that time. YouTube
alone reached 94% of UK adults. Control over attention at this scale gives
platform operators extraordinary influence over advertising, discovery,
recommendation and purchasing, even where consumers pay nothing directly for
the underlying service.
The same dependency
is increasingly apparent across public services. The UK public sector spends
more than £26 billion annually on digital technology and employs nearly 100,000
digital and data professionals. G-Cloud 15, launched in 2026, carries an estimated
four-year value of about £14 billion, with roughly £3 billion of annual
public-sector cloud expenditure expected through the framework. Digital
infrastructure has therefore become fundamental to government delivery and
private commerce alike.
Power in these
markets often arises from architecture rather than ownership. Search rankings
determine visibility, app stores determine distribution, defaults influence
behaviour, data improve personalisation, and algorithms determine which options
are promoted or suppressed. A platform can therefore act simultaneously as
marketplace operator, rule-maker, competitor, and gatekeeper, so control over
access conditions can matter as much as prices, physical assets, or sales
volumes, particularly once participation becomes commercially unavoidable.
The CMA has begun
testing that power directly, designating Google with SMS in general search and
search advertising, and Apple and Google with SMS in their respective mobile
platforms, while extending its scrutiny into enterprise software through an SMS
investigation of Microsoft’s business-software ecosystem. The Digital Markets,
Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCCA) supplies the legal architecture
behind that shift, and the chapters that follow trace how gateways once treated
as background infrastructure have become a defined subject of UK economic regulation.
The Digital
Economy and Corporate Power
The digital economy
has become part of the infrastructure through which UK households, businesses
and public bodies communicate, advertise, buy, sell and obtain information.
Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) estimates indicate
that the Digital and Technology sector generated around £408 billion of
turnover and £158 billion of gross value added (GVA) in 2024, equivalent to
about 6% of UK GVA, while employing approximately 1.33 million people
nationally.
Digital platforms
can occupy several commercial roles at once. A search engine may connect users
with information while selling advertising; an app store may distribute
applications while operating competing applications; and an online marketplace
may host independent sellers while retailing its own products. Social platforms
similarly control access to audiences while monetising attention and data,
creating conflicts where a platform sets rules for markets in which it also
competes.
The economic
significance of those gateways is visible in everyday behaviour. Ofcom reported
that UK adults spent an average of four-and-a-half hours online each day in
2025, with Alphabet- and Meta-owned services accounting for more than half of
total online time. Office for National Statistics (ONS) data also show that
internet sales represented 27.4% of Great Britain’s total retail sales during
2025, underlining how digital interfaces increasingly shape which businesses
consumers encounter.
Gatekeeper power
therefore extends beyond headline market share. Control over rankings, default
settings, app approvals, advertising auctions, payment systems, data access and
interoperability can influence whether another business reaches customers at all.
The commercial consequences affect private enterprise and public services
alike, because government, local authorities, universities, National Health
Service (NHS) bodies and regulated industries increasingly depend on cloud,
mobile, search and software ecosystems supplied by a comparatively small number
of global technology companies.
Why Traditional
Competition Law Was Being Challenged
Traditional
competition law remains essential, but digital markets exposed limitations in
enforcement models designed around slower-moving industries and identifiable
transactions. Network effects can strengthen a platform as more users join,
because participation makes the service more valuable to other users,
advertisers or sellers. That feedback loop can produce rapid concentration
before an investigation concludes, leaving competitors facing a market in which
scale itself becomes a barrier to entry or expansion.
Data can reinforce
the same process. Large platforms may observe billions of searches, clicks,
purchases or interactions, improving algorithms, advertising tools and
personalisation in ways unavailable to smaller rivals. The CMA’s 2020 digital
advertising study found that Google had generated at least 90% of UK
general-search traffic for many years, and that in 2019 it earned more than 90%
of the £7.3 billion UK search-advertising market.
Economies of scale
add another layer. Digital services often require substantial expenditure on
software engineering, data centres, cyber security, artificial intelligence
(AI) and global distribution. At the same time, the marginal cost of serving an
additional user can be comparatively low. Successful platforms can therefore
spread high fixed costs across immense user bases. In cloud infrastructure, the
CMA reported a UK market worth about £9 billion in 2023, growing by more than
30% annually.
Lock-in can be
equally powerful. Customers may accumulate purchased applications, stored data,
learned workflows, subscriptions and technical integrations that make changing
providers costly, even where an alternative exists. The CMA’s cloud
investigation identified egress charges, technical barriers and committed-spend
discounts as impediments to switching, finding that Amazon Web Services and
Microsoft each accounted for up to 40% of UK customer spending on cloud
services during the review.
Speed completes the
challenge. Digital products, interfaces and AI features can change in weeks,
whereas conventional competition cases may require lengthy evidence gathering,
legal analysis and appeals. By the time a remedy arrives, consumer habits, developer
investment and market structure may have shifted materially. The policy
response was therefore not to abandon established competition law, but to
supplement it with a forward-looking regime addressing entrenched power before
harm becomes effectively irreversible.
The Digital
Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024
The DMCCA received
Royal Assent on 24 May 2024 and created a wide-ranging reform package rather
than a single technology rulebook. Its three principal strands address
competition in digital markets, broader competition-law and merger-control
reform, and stronger consumer protection. The digital-markets competition
regime commenced on 1 January 2025, while the principal direct
consumer-enforcement and unfair-commercial-practices provisions took effect on
6 April 2025, giving businesses a transitional period before the new consumer
regime fully applied.
The competition
reforms modernised several existing powers. Among them, the ordinary UK merger
turnover threshold increased from £70 million to £100 million. In comparison, a
new acquirer-focused jurisdictional test can capture transactions where one
party has at least a 33% UK share of supply and UK turnover exceeding £350
million. A small-merger safe harbour generally removes transactions from the
share-of-supply test where each party’s UK turnover is £10 million or less.
Consumer enforcement
changed just as significantly. The CMA can now determine certain consumer-law
infringements administratively rather than depending solely on court
proceedings, with penalties for relevant infringements reaching the greater of
£300,000 or 10% of worldwide turnover. Taken together, the three strands
connect market structure, corporate conduct and consumer outcomes, treating
digital power not as an isolated technology issue but as a competition,
governance and consumer-protection concern across the economy.
From Reactive
Enforcement to Proactive Regulation
Conventional
competition enforcement usually asks whether conduct has already infringed
established legal prohibitions, leaving regulators examining yesterday’s
behaviour while technology, interfaces and commercial strategies keep changing.
The DMCCA adds a more anticipatory model. Once a business has SMS for a
designated digital activity, the CMA can establish tailored conduct
requirements and investigate pro-competition interventions without first
proving a conventional abuse of dominance in every instance.
The distinction
matters because digital markets can tip. A default setting, exclusive
distribution arrangement or discriminatory ranking practice may influence
millions of users, while developers and advertisers adapt investment decisions
around platform rules. If a challenger loses access during a critical growth
phase, later compensation may not recreate the competitive opportunity already lost
to a faster-moving rival. Forward-looking regulation therefore aims to preserve
contestability while a market can still respond.
Statutory tests
nevertheless constrain the regime. SMS requires substantial and entrenched
market power, a position of strategic significance, a UK link and satisfaction
of the turnover condition. Conduct requirements must be proportionate and
pursue fair dealing, open choices, or trust and transparency, while
pro-competition interventions require an investigation and an adverse effect on
competition. These safeguards distinguish targeted digital regulation from a
power to redesign successful businesses simply because they are large.
The CMA has also
emphasised participation and sequencing. Its statutory SMS investigation period
is nine months, during which it gathers evidence from the business under
investigation, customers, competitors, trade bodies and interested parties.
During the regime’s first wave of investigations, the CMA reported meeting more
than 170 stakeholders. This evidence-led structure matters because the economic
effects of defaults, interoperability limits, data access and ranking systems
can differ markedly between search, mobile, cloud and business software.
Google search
demonstrates the shift from diagnosis to rules. The CMA opened its first SMS
investigation in January 2025, designated Google’s general search and
search-advertising activities on 10 October, and subsequently moved to specific
requirements rather than reopening a conventional dominance case for each
concern. By June 2026, the CMA had imposed publisher, fair-ranking and
data-portability requirements, illustrating how the regime can progress from designation
to detailed obligations within a defined structure.
The approach can
also influence behaviour without immediately imposing every available statutory
measure. In April 2026, Apple and Google implemented commitments on app review,
ranking, data use and, for Apple, requests for interoperable access to operating-system
features. The CMA described these as immediate improvements following SMS
designation. Such outcomes show proactive regulation that combines formal
requirements, commitments, monitoring, and consultation, selecting whichever
mechanism is proportionate to the concern identified.
Strategic Market
Status
SMS is the gateway
into the DMCCA’s digital-markets regime. It is not a general label attached to
a corporation, nor a finding that every activity it undertakes is
anti-competitive. Under section 2, the CMA designates an undertaking for a
digital activity linked to the United Kingdom, so obligations connect to the
specific activity that generated the regulatory concern rather than to the business
as a whole.
Designation requires
both substantial and entrenched market power and a position of strategic
significance. The CMA must assess power on a forward-looking basis over at
least five years, considering foreseeable developments if designation did not
occur, without conducting a formal market-definition exercise. The approach
recognises that rapidly evolving digital ecosystems may not fit comfortably
within rigid product boundaries, particularly where operating systems,
browsers, applications, advertising and data services interact.
A separate turnover
condition limits the regime to businesses of exceptional economic scale. The
threshold is met where the relevant undertaking or group has more than £25
billion in global turnover or more than £1 billion in UK turnover during the
relevant period. Meeting the financial threshold does not itself establish SMS;
it merely permits consideration of designation where the remaining conditions
concerning power, strategic significance and UK connection are also satisfied.
An SMS designation
ordinarily lasts five years unless revoked earlier, giving the CMA time to
monitor conduct and implement measures while preventing designation from
becoming permanent by default. Before expiry, the CMA must reassess the
position through a further investigation if designation may continue. Apple and
Google’s October 2025 mobile-platform designations therefore concern operating
systems, native app distribution, mobile browsers and browser engines
specifically, rather than every product those groups supply.
What Makes a
Business Strategically Powerful?
Strategic power is
broader than being large. Section 6 allows strategic significance to arise
where a digital activity has significant size or scale, is used by a
significant number of other businesses in conducting their activities, enables
the undertaking to extend market power into other activities, or allows it to
influence how other businesses conduct themselves. A gateway can therefore be
strategically important even where users pay little or nothing directly for
access.
Search illustrates
the gateway effect particularly clearly. Google handles more than 90% of UK
general search queries, and the CMA reported that more than 200,000 UK
businesses collectively spent over £10 billion on Google search advertising in
the year preceding its January 2026 proposals. Search rankings and advertising
access consequently affect not only Google’s revenues, but also the visibility,
customer acquisition costs and growth prospects of businesses across the wider
economy.
Mobile ecosystems
create similar leverage. The CMA found that around 90–100% of UK mobile devices
run on Apple or Google mobile platforms. The UK app economy is estimated to
generate around 1.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) and support about 400,000
jobs, while app-store commissions can reach 30% on some in-app purchases.
Control over app approval, ranking, payment routes, browser technology and
device functionality can shape commercial opportunities far beyond the platform
operator itself.
Strategic power can
also arise through enterprise technology that public and private organisations
depend upon daily. The CMA’s fourth SMS investigation, opened in May 2026 and
examined in detail later, is testing whether a major business-software
ecosystem raises the same gatekeeping concerns. The case shows that gatekeeping
is not confined to consumer smartphones: procurement, cloud migration, and AI
adoption can equally depend on workplace software architecture.
Barriers to entry
complete the picture. A challenger may need capital, data, developer
participation, consumer trust, compatible technology and access to distribution
before competing effectively, and these requirements can reinforce one another,
making entry theoretically possible but commercially difficult. Strategic
significance therefore reflects both present scale and the ability to influence
the competitive environment around it, shaping the opportunities available to
customers, suppliers and would-be competitors alike.
Conduct
Requirements
Once the CMA
establishes an SMS, it may impose tailored conduct requirements relating to the
designated digital activity. These are not a uniform code applied identically
to every designated business. A requirement must fall within the permitted
statutory types and be proportionate to one or more objectives: fair dealing,
open choices, or trust and transparency, allowing regulation to target a
specific source of market power.
Permitted
requirements can oblige an SMS business to trade on fair and reasonable terms,
run effective complaints processes, or provide information users need. They can
also prevent discriminatory treatment, self-preferencing or restrictions that
stop users from choosing competing services where the statutory conditions are
met. The emphasis is practical: the CMA converts broad competition concerns
into observable operating rules that developers, advertisers and customers can
understand and challenge.
Google’s
fair-ranking requirement shows how that tailoring works in practice. It obliges
Google to rank organic results using objective, non-discriminatory criteria,
including within generative-AI search features, and to provide greater
transparency about ranking changes. A companion data-portability requirement
enables authorised third parties to receive UK consumers’ search data free of
charge. Together, the measures address visibility and switching without
prescribing Google Search’s design in every respect.
Pro-Competition
Interventions
Conduct requirements
focus mainly on behaviour; pro-competition interventions can address deeper
features of a digital market. Following SMS designation, the CMA may
investigate whether a factor or combination of factors relating to the
designated activity is producing an adverse effect on competition. If that test
is met, it can impose measures to remedy, mitigate or prevent the effect, in an
investigation that normally runs for up to nine months.
Potential
interventions can reach structural features that everyday compliance rules may
not resolve. CMA guidance identifies possibilities such as improving
interoperability, enabling data portability or changing technical arrangements
that make switching difficult. The legislation permits a broad remedial
approach derived from the Enterprise Act framework, subject to proportionality
and procedural safeguards, and the CMA can test or trial interventions before
embedding a remedy across a changing market.
Cloud services
illustrate why deeper intervention can matter. Building on the market
investigation discussed earlier, the CMA found an adverse effect on competition
in 2025, identifying switching barriers, concentration and software-licensing
concerns and recommending that it consider digital-markets investigations
relating to major providers. The subsequent response combined engagement on
egress fees and interoperability with the scrutiny that later became a
dedicated SMS investigation into enterprise software.
That sequence also
demonstrates an important boundary between tools. A market investigation can
diagnose sector-wide problems, whereas an SMS designation creates an ongoing
framework for targeted obligations concerning a strategically powerful digital
activity. In March 2026, the CMA said Microsoft and Amazon were taking material
steps on interoperability and cloud egress fees following engagement, while its
Board separately decided to open the wider ecosystem investigation described
later in this discussion.
Pro-competition
interventions are not designed to guarantee competitors’ success. Their purpose
is to improve the competitive process where market characteristics prevent
effective rivalry. This distinction matters for investment incentives because
successful innovation and scale are not infringements in themselves. The
regulatory question is whether entrenched control over data, technical
standards, access points, or customer switching restricts competitive pressure
enough to justify proportionate intervention that targets the obstacle rather
than success.
For UK public
procurement, the implications are significant. Central government departments,
local authorities, NHS organisations, universities and housing providers
increasingly purchase cloud, software, cyber-security and digital-platform
services whose interoperability can affect long-term switching costs. Measures
that lower technical or contractual barriers may strengthen future tender
competition and reduce dependency risk, extending the relationship between
digital-market regulation and procurement policy well beyond household
consumers, into resilience, value for money and supplier choice across publicly
funded services.
The Digital
Markets Unit and the CMA
The Digital Markets
Unit (DMU) operates within the CMA rather than as a separate statutory
regulator. It was launched in shadow form in April 2021, before the DMCCA
supplied the legal powers needed for the new regime. The CMA Board retains
overall responsibility, while a Digital Markets Board Committee oversees and
takes delegated decisions, placing digital-market expertise alongside
established merger, competition and consumer-enforcement capabilities within
one national authority.
The scale of that
wider institution is material. For 2025–26, the CMA had a resource budget
authorised at £148.4 million and reported resource outturn of £136.1 million,
including total staff costs of approximately £105 million. Its impact
assessment estimated average annual direct consumer benefits of £3.3 billion
over the three years to 2025–26, equivalent to about £25 of measurable consumer
benefit for every £1 spent on its operations.
Day to day, the DMU’s
work looks less like a courtroom than a standing conversation. Caseworkers
spend months in meetings with engineers, publishers, developers and rival
businesses before a single obligation is drafted, because a ranking algorithm
or a billing default cannot be understood from a filing alone. That patient,
technically literate style of regulation is itself part of what the DMCCA was
designed to introduce alongside its formal powers.
Digital regulation
is also increasingly collaborative. The CMA works alongside sector and
cross-economy regulators including Ofcom, the Information Commissioner’s Office
(ICO) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) through mechanisms developed
for digital regulation, and cloud services illustrate the value of that
interaction: Ofcom’s market study referred the CMA for an in-depth competition
investigation. Digital ecosystems frequently cut across competition,
communications, privacy, financial services, cyber security and procurement,
making institutional coordination particularly important.
The Act in
Practice -- Google, Apple and the Emerging SMS Regime
The regime moved
from legislation to operational reality during 2025, with Google and then Apple
and Google together designated with SMS in quick succession, as already noted.
Designation itself creates no immediate obligation, however; it simply opens the
door to tailored measures. What those measures actually require once decided,
rather than merely when they were announced, is where the practical character
of the regime becomes clearest, and where its real test lies.
The publisher
requirement imposed on Google is particularly significant as generative AI
reshapes search. It requires Google to give publishers effective controls over
the use of their search content in generative-AI features, clearer information
about that use, engagement metrics and appropriate attribution. The CMA
described the opt-out capability as a world first. For news organisations and
specialist publishers, the measure addresses bargaining power where material
can feed AI-generated answers that reduce direct visits.
Apple and Google’s
mobile commitments address a different gateway. In April 2026, both companies
implemented measures covering app review, ranking and data use, with Apple
additionally providing a route for developers to request interoperable access
to operating-system functionality. These measures target predictability and
access rather than attempting to determine which applications ultimately
succeed, reflecting the proportionality that constrains every conduct
requirement under the statutory framework.
Further intervention
remains under development. In June 2026, the CMA consulted on steering
requirements intended to let developers direct users toward alternative
transaction routes on fair and reasonable terms, potentially reducing
dependence on app-store payment arrangements. The emerging regime is iterative:
designation identifies strategic power, evidence determines priorities, and
legal process shapes each intervention that follows, whether through binding
requirements, negotiated commitments or continued monitoring of voluntary
change.
Google and Apple
provide practical tests of whether the regime’s iterative flexibility can
improve competition without suppressing innovation. In contrast, the Microsoft
investigation will test whether similar concerns arise within enterprise
software. In these cases, the CMA has translated findings of strategic market
power into obligations directed at specific commercial practices, rather than
applying a uniform regulatory template regardless of how market power operates
within each digital activity.
Where the Regime
Goes Next
The next frontier is
enterprise software. On 14 May 2026, the CMA opened its fourth SMS
investigation, examining Microsoft’s business-software ecosystem across
productivity software, personal-computer and server operating systems, database
management systems and security products. The CMA says hundreds of thousands of
UK businesses and public-sector organisations use Microsoft software daily,
with more than 15 million commercial users across the ecosystem, making its
competitive structure economically significant.
The investigation is
considering whether bundling, default settings and limits on interoperability
may make it harder for customers to switch providers or combine Microsoft
products with competing services. The timing matters because generative and
agentic AI is increasingly embedded in familiar workplace tools such as
Microsoft 365 and Copilot. The CMA is therefore examining whether ecosystem
advantages could influence which competing AI products can integrate
effectively with software already used throughout organisations.
Public-sector
dependency makes the inquiry especially relevant beyond conventional technology
markets. Hospitals, councils, universities and central-government bodies use
productivity suites, identity tools, operating systems, security products and
cloud services as operational infrastructure. A 2025 procurement notice from
Kettering General Hospital and Northampton General Hospital, for example,
estimated Microsoft licensing at about £2.44 million excluding Value Added Tax
(VAT) over three years, illustrating how ecosystem choices become long-term
procurement commitments.
The CMA has not yet
concluded that Microsoft has SMS. The statutory investigation must be completed
within nine months, with a decision indicated by February 2027. Its
significance lies in the question being tested: whether gatekeeping can arise
not only where consumers search, download apps or use smartphones, but where
organisations depend upon interconnected software, security, cloud and AI tools
whose compatibility can materially affect switching, resilience and
competition.
A New Era of
Consumer Enforcement
Consumer enforcement
changed fundamentally on 6 April 2025. Under the DMCCA, the CMA can investigate
suspected breaches of specified consumer legislation, issue provisional and
final infringement notices, impose directions, accept undertakings and levy financial
penalties through an administrative process. Courts retain an important role,
but the CMA no longer needs a court judgment to decide that certain consumer
laws have been infringed, substantially increasing the immediacy of regulatory
exposure for businesses.
The sanctions alter
the economics of non-compliance. For an infringement, the maximum penalty is
the greater of £300,000 or 10% of worldwide turnover. Breaching undertakings or
directions can attract penalties up to the greater of £150,000 or 5% of
turnover, while information failures can trigger separate sanctions. Consumer
law therefore shifts from a potentially remote litigation risk into an exposure
that can affect earnings, reputation, customer remediation and board-level risk
management.
The first year
demonstrated how quickly those powers could translate into enforcement. The CMA
opened investigations into 14 businesses, settled with two, issued 159 advisory
and warning letters and published or updated 20 guidance documents during 2025–26,
with early priorities including drip pricing, fake reviews and online choice
architecture. The AA, Marks Electrical and StubHub cases examined later in this
discussion each grew out of that same first-year enforcement drive.
Unfair Commercial
Practices
Part 4 of the DMCCA
replaced and updated the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations
2008 for commercial practices occurring from 6 April 2025. Much of the previous
framework remains recognisable, including prohibitions on misleading actions,
misleading omissions, aggressive practices and conduct contrary to professional
diligence. The change is therefore evolutionary as well as reforming:
established consumer-protection principles continue, but now sit within
legislation supported by stronger direct enforcement.
The regime also
sharpens particular obligations. Where a trader makes an “invitation to
purchase”, specified material information must be supplied or be apparent from
context, and omitting it can itself make a practice unfair. The Act addresses
drip pricing directly and bans fake reviews, so commercial teams must evaluate
the customer journey, since legality can depend on what consumers are told
before they decide, not merely what appears at checkout.
The practical reach
is broad. The rules can apply to advertising, websites, apps, marketplaces,
social-media promotions, call centres and other commercial communications
before, during and after a transaction. The CMA’s November 2025 cross-economy
review examined more than 400 businesses across 19 sectors and identified
potential pricing or sales-practice concerns in 14 of them, showing how widely
these obligations already reach in ordinary commercial life.
Unfair commercial
practices are consequently not a specialist retail issue confined to a handful
of well-known sectors. A membership website, a business-to-business software
provider, a local tradesperson’s booking page and a national retailer can each
fall within the same rules if they shape how a consumer decides to transact.
That breadth is why the sections that follow examine specific practices: drip
pricing, fake reviews, and interface design.
Misleading
Pricing and Drip Pricing
Drip pricing occurs
when consumers are shown an initial price and unavoidable charges are
introduced later in the purchasing journey. Under the DMCCA, invitations to
purchase must present the total price, including mandatory fees, taxes and
charges, or explain how it will be calculated where the total cannot reasonably
be calculated in advance. Optional extras remain distinct, but must not be
presented in a way that disguises what a consumer actually has to pay.
The economic scale
is substantial. Department for Business and Trade (DBT) research published
before commencement found that 46% of online businesses used hidden or dripped
fees. It estimated that consumers could spend up to £3.5 billion extra online
each year because of them. Service, booking and processing charges were
particularly problematic because they were frequently unavoidable yet disclosed
late, weakening consumers’ ability to compare competing offers on a genuinely
like-for-like basis.
The CMA responded
with final price-transparency guidance, CMA209, on 18 November 2025, explaining
mandatory charges, taxes, drip pricing and partitioned pricing, where component
prices are displayed without making the overall payable amount sufficiently clear.
On the same day, as part of the wider sweep already described, the regulator
opened investigations into eight businesses and sent advisory letters to 100
more across 14 sectors, immediately translating general guidance into targeted
casework.
Enforcement quickly
produced outcomes. In April 2026, Automobile Association Developments Limited
(AA) admitted infringements involving a mandatory £3 booking fee at its AA
Driving School and BSM Driving School businesses, and the CMA imposed a £4.2
million penalty, reduced from £7 million for early settlement, alongside orders
to refund more than £760,000 to over 80,000 learner drivers, the first use of
the new powers to secure both a penalty and direct refunds together.
StubHub UK followed
in June 2026. The ticket marketplace had added mandatory delivery and service
fees only at the final checkout stage rather than in its headline ticket price.
The CMA fined the business £889,200, again reflecting a settlement discount,
and ordered refunds exceeding £590,000 to more than 50,000 customers. Both
cases show how a charge worth only a few pounds per transaction can still
generate a multi-million-pound liability once repeated at scale.
Price transparency
also has competitive consequences. A business advertising £95 plus a mandatory
£5 charge may appear cheaper than a competitor honestly advertising £100, even
though both transactions ultimately cost the same. The law therefore protects
more than individual purchasing decisions: it helps prevent compliant
businesses being undercut by artificially low headline prices, supporting
comparison, customer trust and fair competition across the market as a whole.
Fake Reviews and
the Economy of Trust
Online reviews have
become commercial infrastructure. The CMA estimates that as much as £23 billion
of UK consumer spending each year is potentially influenced by reviews, while
Which? research cited by the regulator found that 89% of consumers use online
reviews when researching products or services. Ratings can influence search
visibility, conversion rates and marketplace rankings, meaning manipulated
reviews can shift demand between competing businesses and mislead individual
purchasers.
Government research
illustrates the scale of distortion. Across three common e-commerce product
categories, an estimated 11% to 15% of reviews were likely fake. Consumers were
3.1% more likely to buy a product carrying well-written fake reviews, rising to
9.2% where the product cost more than £80. Fake review text alone was estimated
to cause between £50 million and £312 million of annual UK consumer harm,
excluding inflated star ratings and services.
The DMCCA therefore
goes beyond prohibiting somebody from simply writing a fabricated review.
Banned practice 13 covers submitting or commissioning fake reviews, concealing
incentives, misleading publication and offering fake-review services.
Businesses publishing reviews must also take reasonable and proportionate steps
to prevent and remove fake or concealed incentivised reviews. CMA guidance
issued on 4 April 2025 expects risk assessment, published policies, detection
processes and appropriate responses to complaints.
Enforcement has
already reached major platforms. Google gave undertakings requiring stronger
detection and sanctions, including warnings on the profiles of UK businesses
abusing reviews. Amazon followed in June 2025, committing to enhanced systems
addressing fake reviews and “catalogue abuse”, where unrelated products inherit
favourable ratings. After reviewing more than 100 websites, the CMA found
potential compliance shortcomings at 54 businesses and opened investigations
into five organisations, including Autotrader, Just Eat and Feefo, by March
2026.
Online
Interfaces, Choice Architecture and Dark Patterns
Online choice
architecture describes how websites and apps structure the environment in which
consumers make decisions. Rankings, defaults, button prominence, colour,
friction and the order in which information appears can all influence behaviour
without changing the underlying product. Design is therefore not legally
neutral: the CMA has identified practices sometimes described as dark patterns
or sludge, where interface architecture can steer consumers towards outcomes
they might not otherwise choose.
Urgency claims
provide a familiar example. Countdown clocks, “only two left” messages,
popularity statements and limited-time discounts can convey useful information
when genuine, but become problematic when scarcity or deadlines are artificial.
Behavioural evidence reviewed by the CMA found that scarcity messages can
increase perceived value, purchase intentions and speed of purchasing while
reducing further searching, compressing the time available for deliberation and
honest comparison.
Emma Sleep became a
UK case study, though one that reached its conclusion through the courts rather
than the CMA’s newer administrative powers. Following a CMA investigation opened
in 2022, the High Court in May 2026 endorsed a settlement after the retailer
admitted that misleading countdown timers, false high-demand messages, and
certain discount claims breached consumer law, reminding us that older
enforcement routes remain available alongside the DMCCA’s faster procedures.
Defaults also play a
role because consumers often accept pre-selected settings rather than actively
changing them. Between April and November 2025, Marks Electrical automatically
opted purchasers into paid appliance-recycling or packaging-removal services
without obtaining their express agreement, affecting nearly 40,000 customers.
The CMA imposed a £720,000 penalty, reduced for early settlement, and ordered
around £600,000 in refunds, underlining that consent for paid extras must be
genuinely expressed rather than engineered.
Cancellation
journeys can create a similar asymmetry. A service may make joining possible in
seconds but require multiple screens, repeated retention offers or offline
contact to leave, preserving revenue through inertia rather than customer
preference. The forthcoming subscription regime, discussed shortly, addresses
this directly, while existing consumer law may already apply where design
misleads or unfairly pressures consumers into remaining subscribed against
their genuine preference.
None of this depends
on any single villain. A product manager may set a default while solving an
unrelated problem; a developer may build a countdown timer by following a
template; a scarcity message may be inherited from a competitor’s site years
earlier. That ordinariness is precisely the governance challenge: harmful
patterns rarely announce themselves, which is why testing outcomes matters more
than assuming good intentions were enough.
Subscription
Business Models
The dedicated DMCCA
subscription-contract regime is not yet in force. Following consultation, the
Government said in April 2026 that it expects to begin in spring 2027, with
implementing regulations and guidance still required. The scale explains the
policy interest: the UK has approximately 155 million active subscriptions,
representing around £26 billion of consumer spending annually, with the average
person holding about three subscriptions and spending approximately £500 each
year across them.
The forthcoming
rules are intended to make recurring contracts easier to understand and leave.
Traders will face enhanced pre-contract information duties, reminder notices,
and straightforward exit requirements; where consumers subscribe online, an
online exit route must be available. A 14-day renewal cooling-off right is
planned after a trial or a contract of at least 12 months automatically renews,
with Government estimates suggesting the package could deliver around £400
million of consumer benefit each year.
The regime balances
convenience with protection from inertia. Consumers will receive specified
reminders and cooling-off information, while rules are intended to prevent
terms that make cancellation disproportionately difficult. For digital content,
the Government intends proportionate refunds during the renewal cooling-off
period, so providers retain payment for supply already consumed. Businesses
using subscription revenue should treat spring 2027 as an operational deadline
for billing, notifications and cancellation workflows.
Consumer Redress
Enforcement is more
effective when it restores losses in addition to stopping misconduct. Under the
DMCCA framework, the CMA can require redress alongside directions and
penalties, including refunds or compensation for affected consumers, though the
regulator itself does not process those payments; the business subject to the
order administers them. Public enforcement therefore supplements rather than
replaces individual consumer rights and small-claims routes that remain
available in parallel.
By June 2026, the
CMA said its new powers had secured more than £1.95 million in refunds across
its consumer cases, a figure that becomes more meaningful once broken down. The
AA’s refund programme, for instance, is returning an average of around £9 to
each of more than 80,000 learner drivers, a sum few individuals would ever pursue
alone but which becomes a serious corporate liability when multiplied across an
entire customer base.
The other two cases
follow the same pattern with different averages. Marks Electrical’s nearly
40,000 affected customers are receiving roughly £15 each, while StubHub’s more
than 50,000 ticket buyers are due an average of £10.33 per transaction.
Regulatory redress aggregates this kind of low-value, high-volume harm, turning
thousands of individually trivial losses into a single, meaningful, enforceable
liability for the responsible business, rather than leaving each customer to
chase a claim alone.
Public enforcement
does not extinguish the wider private-law framework. Depending on the
circumstances, consumers may still possess contractual, statutory or common-law
remedies, while other enforcers and courts retain functions under the
consumer-protection system generally. The significance of CMA redress is
therefore institutional: it addresses systemic practices affecting large
groups, while individual rights remain available for disputes outside an order
or for losses requiring separate assessment or evidence.
Redress also changes
the financial logic of compliance. A business cannot assume its maximum
exposure is the regulatory penalty, because remediation may require identifying
transactions, contacting customers, processing repayments and reporting
progress to the CMA; StubHub, for example, must report on its refund process
for six months. The real cost of infringement therefore combines penalties,
refunds, administration and reputational damage, making prevention considerably
cheaper than correction after the fact.
Financial
Penalties and the Economics of Compliance
Turnover-linked
penalties are designed to remain meaningful regardless of corporate scale. For
direct consumer-law infringements, the CMA can impose up to the greater of
£300,000 or 10% of worldwide turnover. That percentage matters because a fixed
statutory maximum can become commercially trivial for a multinational group,
whereas linking exposure to global revenue creates a sanction capable of
influencing executive decisions even where the unlawful conduct concerns
comparatively small charges imposed on individual UK consumers.
The architecture
also penalises obstruction and broken commitments. Breaches of consumer
undertakings or CMA directions can attract up to the greater of £150,000 or 5%
of turnover, with potential daily penalties for continuing non-compliance. In
comparison, certain information failures can attract penalties up to the
greater of £30,000 or 1% of turnover. Compliance therefore includes cooperating
accurately with investigations and implementing promised remedies, not merely
correcting the original practice once scrutiny begins.
The digital-markets
regime contains similarly powerful incentives. An SMS undertaking that breaches
a conduct requirement can face a fixed penalty of up to 10% of worldwide
turnover, and breaches of orders or commitments can generate daily penalties of
up to 5% of daily worldwide turnover. For globally scaled technology groups,
those ceilings represent substantial GBP-equivalent exposure, so compliance
with market-opening obligations cannot rationally be treated as a routine
operational cost.
Penalties need not
approach the statutory ceiling to affect behaviour. The AA’s £4.2 million
sanction, Marks Electrical’s £720,000 penalty and StubHub UK’s £889,200 penalty
were all discounted for early settlement, yet still accompanied by refunds and
corrective obligations that outlasted the headline figure. The economics reward
credible compliance systems twice: first by reducing infringement risk, and secondly
by improving an organisation’s ability to detect and correct problems before
regulatory exposure escalates further.
Corporate
Governance and Compliance
Consumer compliance
can no longer sit exclusively within a legal department. Commercial teams may
control pricing architecture, marketing may review it, product managers may own
websites, agencies may run advertising, and data scientists may run recommendation
systems. Each function can create evidence relevant to a CMA investigation, so
boards and executive committees need assurance that legal requirements
translate into operational controls, ownership, testing and escalation
processes across the complete digital customer journey.
Governance should
begin with clear accountability. Organisations need named owners for headline
pricing, mandatory fees, optional extras, review moderation, promotional
claims, subscriptions and cancellation processes. Material changes should be
reviewed before release and monitored afterwards, because dynamic websites can
behave differently from approved screenshots or specifications. Audit trails
should record who approved a claim, what evidence supported it, how an
algorithm was tested, and whether complaints revealed a failing control.
Third-party
technology does not remove responsibility. Retailers may use external checkout
software, review platforms, advertising tools, payment services or AI
applications, yet the consumer experiences the resulting journey as part of the
trader’s offering. Procurement therefore becomes a compliance function:
specifications should define lawful defaults, pricing visibility, data access,
testing rights, and change-control obligations, and contracts should allocate
responsibility for correcting defects without assuming liability can be
outsourced.
Ongoing supervision
matters as much as headline penalties. The CMA has reported that around 90% of
businesses it contacted about fake reviews changed their behaviour, evidence
that guidance, advisory letters and sector sweeps can shift practice well beyond
the handful of organisations formally investigated. A mature compliance
programme should therefore track that broader supervisory activity, rather than
waiting for a formal infringement notice before reassessing commercial
practices.
Artificial
intelligence adds another governance layer because pricing, recommendations and
promotional content can increasingly be generated or adjusted automatically. A
model may optimise conversion rates without understanding that a scarcity
message lacks evidential support or that personalised wording creates a
misleading impression. Human accountability remains essential: organisations
need controls over training data, prompts, deployment objectives, approval
thresholds and override mechanisms wherever automated systems influence
consumers’ transactional decisions.
Artificial
Intelligence and AI-Assisted Selling
Artificial
intelligence is moving from analytical support into direct commercial
interaction. Businesses already use AI to answer customer queries, recommend
products, process refunds and manage marketing campaigns, while agentic systems
can increasingly plan and take actions with limited human intervention. On 9
March 2026, the CMA published dedicated guidance for businesses using AI
agents, reflecting a market in which automated systems may increasingly shape
purchasing decisions, contractual choices and customer outcomes.
The CMA’s central
principle is deliberately straightforward: consumer law does not change because
an organisation substitutes software for an employee. A business remains
responsible for what its AI agent does, even when a third-party developer
designs or supplies the technology. If an agent misleads consumers, withholds
material information or unfairly pressures them, enforcement can follow against
the business using it, with potential penalties reaching 10% of worldwide
turnover and consumer redress.
Transparency becomes
especially important where a consumer might mistake an automated system for a
person or misunderstand its capabilities, and CMA guidance advises businesses
to consider whether an agent should be identified as such. Organisations should
also avoid exaggerating what AI can do or obscuring how a comparison tool
works, disclosing how much of a market it searched, what data it examined, how
it ranked options, and what commercial relationships shaped the result.
The commercial
opportunity remains considerable. DSIT estimated that UK AI companies generated
£23.9 billion of revenue in 2024, up 68% from 2023, while AI-related employment
reached 86,139, with Amazon, Google DeepMind, IBM and Meta among the organisations
contributing substantially to that growth. As adoption spreads through retail,
financial services and travel, compliance-by-design will increasingly determine
whether automated selling builds confidence or generates scalable consumer
harm.
AI,
Personalisation and the Future of Consumer Manipulation
Personalisation can
make digital markets more useful by reducing search costs and presenting
relevant products, but the same capabilities can be used to influence consumers
with increasing precision. Recommender systems may combine browsing histories,
previous purchases, location, demographic information and engagement data to
determine what consumers see and when they see it. The CMA has long recognised
that algorithms can personalise rankings, promotions, notifications and prices,
creating benefits while also increasing the potential for manipulation.
Personalised pricing
requires careful distinction from dynamic pricing. Dynamic pricing adjusts
prices rapidly in response to conditions such as demand, capacity or timing;
personalised pricing may instead use information about an individual to
estimate willingness to pay. Neither practice is automatically unlawful, but
transparency, fairness and data-protection requirements can become relevant.
The CMA warned in 2025 that increasingly sophisticated AI could make dynamic
pricing more prevalent and complex, strengthening the need for clear customer
communication.
Agentic AI could
take persuasion further by negotiating, recommending and acting autonomously on
behalf of sellers or buyers. The CMA expressly warns that an agent which
steers, pressures or misleads consumers in ways that harm their economic
interests is likely to breach consumer law. A sales system optimised solely for
conversion could learn behaviours that outperform safer alternatives while
producing misleading scarcity or excessive pressure unless objectives and
outputs are properly constrained.
The competitive
consequences can extend beyond individual transactions. Recommendation engines
decide which products receive visibility, while personalised rankings can
favour higher-margin offerings, affiliated suppliers or paid placements.
Smaller businesses may struggle to reach customers if opaque systems
consistently privilege established participants. The regulatory challenge is
dual: ensuring personalisation does not manipulate consumers unfairly while
preventing algorithmic gatekeeping from becoming an entrenched competitive advantage
in its own right.
Most shoppers will
never know why they were shown a particular price, product or countdown clock.
That invisibility is not a side effect of personalisation; it is close to the
point of it, since a system that reveals its own persuasion tends to work less
well on the people subjected to it. Regulating something designed not to be
noticed is a genuinely different task from regulating a misleading
advertisement placed in public.
Innovation Versus
Regulation
Regulation
inevitably creates costs. Large technology businesses may need new compliance
teams, technical controls, audit processes and legal review, while smaller
suppliers can face proportionately heavier burdens when interpreting unfamiliar
rules. Excessive intervention could also reduce incentives to test new products
or business models if organisations expect lengthy approvals or unpredictable
obligations, concerns that are particularly acute in AI, where product cycles
can be measured in weeks rather than years.
The counterargument
is that weak competition and low consumer trust can suppress innovation just as
effectively. A dominant gateway may prevent challengers from reaching
customers, while deceptive interfaces or unreliable AI can make consumers less
willing to adopt unfamiliar technologies. The CMA’s 2026–29 strategy therefore
links effective competition with productivity, investment and innovation,
arguing that clear rules can help legitimate businesses compete fairly while
protecting households from exploitation and avoidable economic harm.
The scale of the
wider opportunity makes that balance consequential. DSIT identified 5,862 UK AI
companies in 2024, 58% more than in 2023, with an estimated £11.8 billion of
gross value added attributable to the sector. Dedicated AI companies attracted
around £2.9 billion of investment over the same period. Regulation that
unnecessarily slows this ecosystem could impose real economic costs, while
ineffective regulation could allow market concentration to harden just as
quickly.
Government policy
also shows that regulation sits alongside substantial efforts to stimulate
growth. By January 2026, the Government reported completing 38 of the AI
Opportunities Action Plan’s 50 actions. Five AI Growth Zones had been
designated, Isambard-AI had launched at the University of Bristol, up to £250
million was earmarked for additional cloud capacity, and a Sovereign AI Unit
was established with backing of up to £500 million.
The CMA has
responded by emphasising pace, predictability, proportionality and process,
collectively described as its “4Ps”. The approach is intended to minimise
unnecessary burdens, engage businesses early and select interventions capable
of producing benefits without overreaching. That does not remove disagreement
about individual decisions, but it acknowledges a central economic reality:
regulation can itself influence investment decisions, so credible digital
policy must weigh the harm of inaction against the cost of intervening at all.
Sustainable
innovation consequently depends on more than regulatory restraint. It requires
markets where new entrants can reach customers, consumers can trust digital
transactions, and successful businesses can invest without arbitrary rules. The
DMCCA’s challenge is to preserve those conditions simultaneously: targeted
intervention that lowers switching barriers and improves transparency can
support innovation, while poorly calibrated intervention could raise costs and
discourage the experimentation the strategy is meant to protect.
Corporate Power
in the Digital Economy
Corporate power in
digital markets increasingly depends upon control over gateways rather than
ownership of a physical asset. Search rankings determine visibility; app stores
determine distribution; operating systems determine technical access; marketplaces
determine presentation; and data determine how effectively services learn and
personalise. Defaults can channel millions of users towards one option without
explicit exclusion, which is precisely the kind of influence the DMCCA was
built to address.
Google and the Apple
and Google mobile designations, both examined earlier, illustrate the point at
the consumer end of the economy: a handful of gateways can shape how hundreds
of thousands of businesses reach their own customers. The Microsoft investigation
extends the same logic into the workplace, asking whether productivity
software, operating systems and security tools can collectively create
dependency even where several competing products remain theoretically available
on paper.
Consumer-facing
rules address another dimension of power: the ability to shape choices at
scale. A misleading price, false review, pre-selected charge or manipulative
countdown timer can be replicated across millions of transactions almost
instantly, and AI makes that capability even more powerful because messages and
offers can be personalised automatically. Regulation therefore reaches not only
market structure, but the digital mechanisms that organise attention and
purchasing decisions.
The resulting
framework is broader than conventional ideas of monopoly control. The DMCCA
examines who controls access, information, data, interfaces and the rules
governing participation, while retaining legal thresholds and proportionality
safeguards before its stronger powers apply. Corporate size remains relevant,
but scale alone is not the issue; the deeper concern is whether control over
important gateways lets an organisation shape outcomes that normal market
pressure cannot adequately discipline.
What the Act
Means for Business Leaders
For business
leaders, the practical implication is that digital compliance must be designed
into products rather than reviewed only after launch. Boards should understand
which services depend upon personalised pricing, recommender systems, reviews,
subscription mechanics, automated marketing or AI agents. Senior management
does not need to supervise every interface decision, but it does need assurance
that accountable owners, testing standards and evidence trails exist for
customer-facing systems carrying material legal or reputational risk.
Third-party
oversight is equally important because outsourcing technology does not
outsource legal responsibility. Procurement teams should examine how suppliers
generate recommendations, process customer data, moderate reviews, vary prices
and update models after deployment, with contracts addressing transparency,
audit access, incident notification and evidence retention. Where an AI agent
interacts with consumers, the CMA specifically warns that responsibility
remains with the business using it, even where another organisation built the
technology.
Leadership should
treat both algorithmic testing and regulatory engagement as part of ordinary
resilience planning. Organisations may need pre-deployment scenario testing,
monitoring of live outcomes and documented thresholds for intervention, since
evidence should show how a system actually behaved rather than merely that it
was intended to comply. Businesses that can rapidly reconstruct decisions and
explain system logic are consistently better placed to respond when complaints
or investigations arise.
The Future of UK
Digital Regulation
UK digital
regulation is becoming a network rather than a single regime. The CMA now
combines SMS powers with direct consumer enforcement, while Ofcom administers
the Online Safety Act 2023, the ICO oversees data protection, and the FCA
regulates conduct in financial services. Through the Digital Regulation
Cooperation Forum (DRCF), these authorities coordinate work where algorithms,
platforms, advertising, personal data, consumer protection and competition
increasingly overlap within the same products.
The Online Safety
Act adds an important parallel layer. Ofcom published its register of
categorised services on 30 June 2026, identifying major platforms subject to
additional transparency, accountability and user-choice duties, and its July
2026 consultation covers matters including user empowerment, identity
verification and fraudulent advertising. The same recommender systems that
influence competition and purchasing can therefore attract separate scrutiny
because they also shape exposure to content and safety risks.
Data governance is
evolving alongside platform regulation. The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025
amended the UK data-protection framework and created a more permissive basis
for some solely automated decisions while retaining safeguards, including
information, opportunities to make representations and access to human
intervention for significant decisions. For AI-driven businesses, commercial
optimisation can therefore engage consumer, competition and data-protection
obligations simultaneously, making regulatory mapping essential before
deploying automated systems at scale.
Artificial
intelligence will intensify these interactions further. The AI Security
Institute researches risks from advanced systems but is not itself a regulator,
while sector regulators apply existing and newer legal powers within their
respective remits. The CMA’s agentic-AI guidance, discussed earlier,
demonstrates how general consumer law can govern emerging technology without
waiting for bespoke legislation, and future questions will include autonomous
purchasing and machine-to-machine negotiation.
Near-term milestones
will test the framework’s coherence. The CMA expects to conclude its Microsoft
investigation by February 2027, while the dedicated DMCCA subscription-contract
regime is anticipated to commence in spring 2027. Ofcom continues implementing
enhanced duties for categorised online services over the same period. Each
development adds another operational layer for organisations whose products
combine platforms, subscriptions, personal data, advertising and AI capability,
increasing the value of coordinated guidance and proportionate sequencing
between regulators.
The central
challenge will be keeping regulation technologically durable. Rules tied too
closely to today’s interfaces can become obsolete as voice assistants,
autonomous agents and new distribution models emerge. Principles on fair
dealing, transparency, contestability, and consumer autonomy offer greater
adaptability, but only if enforcement remains predictable, depending on
continued collaboration among regulators, businesses, and technologists to
identify genuine harms without treating every technological change as a
separate prohibition.
Summary --
Rebalancing Digital Markets
The DMCCA marks a
shift in how the United Kingdom responds to economic power in digital markets.
Rather than relying solely on retrospective competition cases or individual
consumer claims, it combines targeted regulation of strategically powerful
digital activities with stronger competition tools and direct consumer
enforcement. The underlying principle is both preventative and remedial:
intervention can address market conditions and commercial practices before harm
becomes embedded at scale.
That shift reflects digital
market economics. Network effects, data advantages, defaults, ranking systems,
app distribution and ecosystem integration can create power without traditional
ownership of a physical bottleneck. Search, mobile platforms, cloud services
and enterprise software demonstrate how access to customers increasingly
depends upon digital infrastructure controlled by comparatively few
organisations, and the SMS regime responds by focusing on strategic activities
where statutory tests for entrenched power are satisfied.
Consumer protection
has undergone an equally important transformation. The CMA can now investigate,
decide infringements, impose directions, obtain redress and levy penalties
reaching 10% of worldwide turnover for relevant breaches. The AA, Marks Electrical
and StubHub cases together show how apparently modest charges can generate
substantial penalties and refunds once repeated across thousands of
transactions, turning pricing, reviews, interface design and consent mechanisms
into enterprise governance issues rather than peripheral compliance matters.
Artificial
intelligence extends that logic into future commerce. AI agents may recommend,
negotiate, sell, refund and communicate with consumers, but responsibility
remains with the organisations deploying them. Personalisation can improve
relevance and efficiency, yet it can also increase the capacity to steer
behaviour or invisibly optimise persuasion. The future regulatory question is
therefore not simply what an algorithm decides, but whose commercial interests
it serves and how transparently it discloses its influence to the people it
affects.
Rebalancing digital
markets does not require choosing between innovation and regulation.
Competitive access, consumer confidence and predictable rules can themselves
support investment and experimentation, while disproportionate intervention can
impose real costs. The enduring task is to preserve the benefits of scale and
technological progress without allowing control over gateways, data or
interfaces to become immune from competitive pressure or consumer
accountability, with earlier intervention and proportionality at the centre of
that balance.
Additional
articles can be found at Business Law Made Easy. This site looks at business
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Further Reading
- Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, legislation.gov.uk
- Competition and Markets Authority, “Digital markets competition regime: guidance on the CMA’s approach”, gov.uk
- Competition and Markets Authority, case page: “Google’s general search and search advertising services”, gov.uk/cma-cases
- Competition and Markets Authority, case page: “Apple and Google mobile platforms”, gov.uk/cma-cases
- Competition and Markets Authority, case page: “Microsoft’s business software ecosystem”, gov.uk/cma-cases
- Competition and Markets Authority, “Price transparency guidance for businesses” (CMA209), November 2025
- Competition and Markets Authority, “Guidance for businesses using AI agents”, March 2026
- Competition and Markets Authority, Annual Report and Accounts 2025–26
- Competition and Markets Authority, “Digital advertising market study”, July 2020
- Department for Business and Trade, research on online pricing practices and drip pricing, gov.uk
- Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, “AI Sector Study” and UK Digital and Technology sector economic estimates, gov.uk
- Ofcom, “Online Nation” report and register of categorised services under the Online Safety Act 2023, ofcom.org.uk
- Office for National Statistics, “Retail sales, Great Britain” statistical bulletins, ons.gov.uk
- Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, legislation.gov.uk
- Whish, R. and Bailey, D., “Competition Law” (Oxford University Press, current edition)
Gov.uk news releases:
- “CMA orders the AA and BSM driving schools to refund learner drivers over drip pricing” (April 2026);
- “CMA fines Marks Electrical for unfair online pricing practices” (June 2026);
- “CMA orders StubHub UK to refund customers over hidden fees” (June 2026);
- “Court endorses CMA action as Emma Sleep agrees to change sales practices” (May 2026)
