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Google has announced that it is making further changes to how it displays search results in the European Union in response to ongoing complaints that it fails to comply with the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA).
This will include what it describes as a “short test” of simple “blue link” style search results for hotel inquiries in three EU markets (Belgium, Estonia and Germany) which will – the company suggests – be similar to the way its search engine originally displays results.
The EU’s main market competitiveness reform entails heavy penalties for non-compliance of up to 10% of global annual turnover (or more in the case of repeat infringements). Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has been under investigation since March over new rich features it launched in response to the DMA, but rivals say they undermine the regulation’s ban on self-preference.
Travel comparison sites were among those who continued to complain that Google was trying to circumvent its obligations.
Google responded by claiming that the changes to search had penalized other players in the travel ecosystem. In new Blog post Tuesday’s report — attributed to Oliver Bethell, Google’s chief legal officer — suggests that “direct booking clicks” for airlines, hotel operators and small retailers have fallen by about a third (30%).
The tech giant appears to be attempting a “divide and conquer” strategy in response to the DMA, which seeks to use compliance changes to play off its main competitors (“the big online travel aggregators”) against other travel retailers whose search engine has the potential to rise or fall based on On the amount of traffic you send them.
Ironically, direct market access is an attempt to prevent gatekeepers from unfairly flexing their market muscles, so it will be interesting to see what the European Commission does with this tactic.
The latest changes proposed by Google to how search results are displayed will affect more than just the travel sector — also affecting searches for products and restaurants, according to the company’s blog post.
“We believe the latest proposal is the right way to balance the difficult trade-offs involved in the DMA,” the letter said, adding that it “remains hopeful that it will be able to reach a solution that complies with the law and continues to do so.” Providing European users and companies with access to useful technology.
Competing supply units
The changes announced in Google’s blog post include displaying what it claims will be “expanded and evenly formatted” modules in search results when users search for products, restaurants, flights or hotels that will allow people to choose between results that take them to Google’s competitors (comparison sites) or Meta search engines, review sites, etc.) or results that take them directly to suppliers or retailers’ websites.
A lot will depend on how Google presents this choice, but the blog post doesn’t provide any visual examples. Additionally, the blog post says it will introduce “other new formats that allow comparison sites and suppliers to display more information about what’s on their websites, such as prices and images.” Again, no visual examples are provided.
Finally, Google says it will launch new ad units for comparison sites. But, again, we’ll have to wait and see what those things look like.
Travel aggregators’ main complaint about Google’s initial DMA response was that the company was shifting from competing unfairly with them by placing its comparison services in eye-catching boxes directly at the top of search results to competing unfairly with them by making the comparison. Site style features at the top of search results and use a range of new platform features to try to keep users on Google by discouraging them from clicking away to competing services.
Google’s response was to claim that it had to reduce the quality of the search experience it could offer Europeans by making it less useful. Bethell continues this line of attack in the blog post, as well as implying that the DMA prevents Google from “innovating and competing.”
But the complaints continued. Travel aggregators are also unhappy with the rich features that Google now offers for hotel search queries, which offer to display a map of hotels in the desired location along with pricing information and links to featured hotel websites.
The visually rich feature appears intended to direct search traffic directly to suppliers (in this case, hotels) — which could leave comparison sites out in the cold.
“While many stakeholders are happy with the changes we’ve made, some sites continue to demand more, such as a complete ban on anything more complex than a simple blue link to a website. “This would prevent Google from showing people useful information such as prices And ratings,” Bethel continues — as he prepares to announce the aforementioned “Blue Link” test.
A “reluctant” return to the blue links
This is not framed as a DMA change that Google wants to make. On the contrary, it is called a “quiz” so that one can “understand how these changes will affect the user experience and traffic to websites.”
“The test will remove some features that have been the focus of discussion, including a map showing hotel locations and hotel results underneath them. Instead, we will display a list of individual links to websites without any of the additional features — similar to the old ‘blue 10 links’ format from years ago.” She went on.
Google claims it is “extremely reluctant” to do the testing at all, meaning it believes it is being forced into this success — and forced to lower search quality for EU users — by competitors demanding it return the product experience to the previous Internet era. . (Although web users tired of Google’s endless reshaping of self-serving search results might welcome the return of some plain blue links, TBH.)
It’s not clear how long the test will last, but Google says hotel search results will return to “normal” — whatever that means in this volatile context — once the data collection is over.
Ultimately, however, it will be up to the European Commission’s DMA implementers to determine what fair compliance looks like.
We have contacted the Commission for a response to Google’s announcement. EU spokeswoman Lea Zuber responded, saying: “All we can say is that we are currently evaluating Google’s proposals for compliance.”
Google isn’t just under pressure over this element of its DMA compliance. Last week, privacy-focused search competitor DuckDuckGo urged the commission to expand its investigation into the tech giant — accusing it of failing to provide comprehensive “click-and-query” data to competitors; And doubling down on its complaints that the choice screens that DMA requires Google to display don’t work because it says they don’t currently allow users to move away from Google products easily enough.
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