The new UK Labour government is keen – like everyone in the country – to drive economic growth. Digital, as one of the country’s most vibrant sectors, has to play a big part in this. At the Movement for an Open Web we think there are five actions the government could take to turbocharge the UK digital market.
- End the £1000 per household Google, Apple and Facebook tax – Through their monopoly power, the platforms are costing UK households £1000 each through the artificially inflated cost of advertising. Reducing this hidden cost on the sale of products would drive growth.
The CMA 2020 Digital Markets report, based on 2019 numbers, calculated the impact as raising the prices of advertising for each UK household to be about £500. In 2024 more recent numbers give us over £1,000 per household
- Break up Google and Apple’s walled gardens – The UK’s digital strength is being crushed by the weight of the Google and Apple’s monopoly, stunting economic growth and costing households. With the new powers of the Digital Markets Unit the UK government should join the US and the EU Commission in their efforts to break up their dominance.
- Enable advertising interoperability – we use numbers on our credit cards and our mobile phones use numbers in sim cards for communication every day without any issue. However, the use of alphanumeric random IDs and cookies by Google and Apple is being demonised when used by others. The ICO and CMA should use their powers to guarantee interoperability including the matching of buyers and sellers of digital advertising, boosting the industry’s ability to function effectively and compete with the Google and Apple monopoly.
- Clear Privacy Laws – when data is public, non-personal, it should be able to be used freely. This needs to be clarified in law rather than ICO discretionary guidance. The UK Data Protection and Digital Information Bill is currently at Committee Stage in the House of Lords and could be passed with that clarification as soon as possible.
- Use DMU powers to unbundle AI from big tech now – with Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini, Apple’s Apple Intelligence being tied into their platforms, their market dominance becomes more entrenched. This undermines the opportunities for a large number of smaller and more innovative UK businesses. The DMU need to act swiftly to prevent tying and bundling and require interoperability among AI solutions to prevent it from being monopolised by a small number of existing players.
These simple steps would enable the UK’s digital market to drive sustainable growth on the basis of a well regulated and competitive marketplace.