Amazon And Google Come Under Fire In The UK Over Fake Reviews

Amazon and Google are under investigation by British regulators over concerns that they are not doing enough to tackle the issue of fake reviews on their platforms. Google has been facing criticisms from European regulators, with the UK’s probe the third time this month for the search engine giant.

UK’s CMA Investigates Amazon and Google

UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has revealed earlier today that it is probing online retail giant Amazon and search engine company Google for not doing enough to tackle fake reviews on their respective platforms.

Andrea Coscelli, chief executive of the CMA, said they are investigating concerns that Google and Amazon have not been taking the required steps to prevent and remove fake reviews to protect honest businesses and customers. “It’s important that these tech platforms take responsibility, and we stand ready to take action if we find that they are not doing enough,” he added.

The regulator is concerned that fake consumer reviews have become a huge problem in the e-commerce sector. Amazon has become the number one platform merchants use to hype up their products online. However, the e-commerce giant is doing something about it as it called out social media platforms to help it weed out fake reviews.

The CMA said it would look into Amazon and Google to determine their efforts in detecting and removing fake reviews. The investigation will also look at whether the tech giants penalize reviewers or firms to stop them from posting misleading scores. The CMA praised Facebook for removing thousands of groups that were dealing in false and misleading reviews. The social media company also made changes to its systems to identify, remove and prevent misleading content from appearing on its various platforms.

At the time of this report, Amazon’s stock price is down by 1.56% ahead of the trading session on Friday.

Google is Coming Under Pressure in Europe

Google is facing pressure in Europe. Earlier this month, Google was fined $267 million by the French Competition Authority after the search engine giant was accused of abusing its leadership in the online advert sector. The European Commission (EC) officially launched an investigation into Google’s advertising unit for also abusing its dominance in the market.

Google’s stock price is up by less than 1% at Friday’s pre-market trading decision despite the looming investigation in the UK.