Google has ended a check during which it was returning primary “blue link” search outcomes for hotel-related searches in a handful of markets within the European Union, in response to compliance complaints associated to the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). These blue hyperlinks appeared as a substitute of visually richer outcomes, the place its search engine will show thumbnail images of accommodations together with worth information and likewise plotting their location on a map.
In a weblog publish Thursday, Google’s Oliver Bethell, director, authorized, claimed the outcomes of the check point out that reviving plain blue link-style search outcomes was unhealthy information for accommodations, sending their visitors down by greater than 10%, and thereby making it tougher for travellers to seek out lodging companies to make direct bookings.
Nor, Bethell steered, did rowing again to extra primary search outcomes meaningfully enhance visitors to comparability web sites that combination resort rooms — with Google’s weblog publish claiming “traffic to intermediary sites largely stayed flat.”
Since the DMA got here into power throughout the EU in early March — and even sooner than that, when Google was previewing its response to the bloc’s flagship market contestability regime — comparability web sites have argued it flouting the regulation’s ban on self preferencing by embedding wealthy options into Google search outcomes that compete with their aggregation companies by discouraging customers from turning to vertical search providers.
The stakes are excessive for Google as confirmed breaches of the DMA might result in penalties of as much as 10% of world annual turnover (or much more for repeat offences). Plus, the European Commission already has an open probe of its DMA compliance which covers the self-preferencing challenge. That investigation stays ongoing.
Google has pushed again in opposition to complaints that it’s not taking part in by the EU’s guidelines by framing DMA compliance as an inconvenience for customers. Its suggestion is it’s being compelled to degrade the standard of search outcomes for native customers with a view to keep away from preferencing its personal providers above rival comparability websites.
The blue hyperlinks check was one other manifestation of Google’s anti-DMA lobbying — one which permits it to say it now has information to again up its competition that European search end result high quality is being forcibly wound again to the net 1.zero period because of regulatory overreach.
Whether Google’s check will sway public opinion by some means is unclear. Given the small scale of the check, and the actual fact Google was pulling all of the levers concerned, it actually shouldn’t.
Nor ought to Google devising, operating and framing its personal check, after which announcing outcomes that dovetail with its push for a minimalist interpretation of how the DMA applies to its enterprise, shock or impress the regulation’s enforcers, both.
But the broader challenge of apply the DMA to such a dominant search software in a method that doesn’t introduce some friction or adverse knock-on impression for European customers and companies is tougher to disregard. And it stays to be seen what the European Commission’s investigation will conclude.
Notably, it has taken the bloc longer to succeed in a preliminary conclusion on the Google self preferencing case than the 2 different DMA circumstances it opened concurrently (one regarding Apple’s App Store; and one other on Meta’s compelled consent). In each these different circumstances, preliminary findings had been reached over the summer season — adopted by motion from the tech giants on their respective compliance approaches.
Whereas on Google the EU has saved its powder dry.
The search big’s continued push-back in opposition to DMA complaints — and its heavy framing of the regulation as harming, quite than serving to, European customers — suggests it’s nonetheless holding out for a chance to form a more cost effective interpretation of the foundations for its search enterprise that avoids a state of affairs the place Google search within the EU is compelled to develop into a “blue links” dumb pipe.