The U.K.’s antitrust regulator has launched a probe into Google LLC’s practices in the search market.

The Competition and Markets Authority, or CMA, announced the investigation today. The move comes four months after a U.S. court found that Google maintains an illegal monopoly in the search and search text advertising markets. The Justice Department is seeking a set of antitrust remedies that could require the Alphabet Inc. unit to sell Chrome. 

The new CMA probe is the first of its kind to have been launched by the regulator under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act that went into effect in the U.K. at the start of the year. The legislation expands the CMA’s ability to regulate large tech firms with so-called strategic market status. A company can receive this designation if its worldwide annual revenue is more than $30.5 billion revenue or its U.K. sales exceed £1 billion. 

If a tech giant with strategic market status is found to breach antitrust rules, it can be fined up to 10% of its annual worldwide revenue. The CMA may also order the company to change its business practices.

The newly launched investigation into Google focuses on its activities in the search and search advertising segments. According to the CMA, the probe will seek to determine whether the company has strategic market status in those two areas. Officials will also study the competitive impact of Google’s business practices. 

As part of the probe, the CMA will evaluate whether the Alphabet unit is making it difficult for rivals to enter the search market. The review will place particular emphasis on competing artificial intelligence services. According to the CMA, officials will study whether Google “is able to shape the development of new AI services” in a way that limits their impact on its search engine’s market share.

Google offers specialized search tools geared toward use cases such as traveling booking and e-commerce. As part of its investigation, the CMA will check if the company gives those tools an unfair edge over competing offerings.

The probe will also cover a number of other areas. CMA officials will look into whether Google collects data about consumers without obtaining informed consent. Additionally, the regulator plans to review the way the search giant uses content from publishers in its services.

The CMA will collect feedback on the probe from interested parties until Feb. 3. If the regulator determines that Google has strategic market status and engages in anticompetitive behavior, it could order changes to its business practices. The CMA stated that those changes could require Google to share some internal data with other businesses and give publishers more control over how it uses their content in its AI services.

“We look forward to engaging constructively and laying out how our services benefit U.K. consumers and also businesses, as well as the trade-offs inherent in any new regulations,” Oliver Bethell, Google’s director of competition, wrote in a blog post responding to the investigation. 

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