C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
TL;DR
- EU regulators want to see Google Search stop prioritizing Google services over those offered by third parties.
- Last fall Google tested removing rich hotel booking options from Search, but soon abandoned that effort.
- Now the EU may be about to formally charge Google for violating Digital Markets Act anti-competition rules.
Google’s pretty much always facing legal or regulatory obstacles from somewhere, and over the years we’ve seen the company bob and weave through an onslaught of challenges. Recently, though, it’s been confronted by what may be its most formidable opponent to date, in the form of the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). With strict rules in place to ensure healthy competition, and means to enforce consequences that actually have some teeth, the DMA has been hanging over Google’s European operations like the sword of Damocles since it went into effect last spring. And now a new report suggests that Google could finally be about to feel it drop.
The EU has had its eyes on Google’s operations for a lot of reasons, but one of the investigations we’ve heard the most about concerns Google Search and the extent to which it can favor Google’s own solutions for tasks like booking flights or making hotel reservations, over those offered by third-party sites. Last fall, we saw Google send its Search results in the EU back to the stone age, dropping its own hotel booking tools and just presenting users with a simple list of links.
This was a test to see what DMA compliance might look like, and as Google shared a few weeks later, the company didn’t like what it saw. According to Google, users were unsatisfied with the experience, third-party sites didn’t get any more clicks than before, and in the end fewer hotel reservations were made. So Google stopped its test.
Well, apparently that’s not the kind of outcome the European Commission likes to see, as Reuters now reports that Google will soon be charged with violating the DMA’s rules to ensure fair competition. We can’t yet say exactly what outcome such charges might lead to, but the company could conceivably face fines accounting for 10% of its revenue — and that’s from all over, not just in the EU. It could still be another few months before those charges are laid out, but multiple sources indicate they’re on the way.
With the interests of so many parties butting heads now, from users, to regulators, to the tech company players themselves, it’s increasingly unclear what a mutually agreeable outcome might look like. Neither users nor regulators seem happy with the turn-back-the-clock solution Google tried, and it doesn’t seem like competition was really improved any. Perhaps lighting a very expensive candle under Google’s feet will be exactly what it ultimately takes to get anywhere here.
