The Digital Markets Act (DMA) requires substantial changes to the services Google can provide in Europe. Over the past year, we have made many changes to comply, including significantly redesigning certain features and completely removing others in Europe.
This includes more than 20 modifications to Google Search, like the introduction of dedicated units and formats to boost the prominence of comparison sites for free in categories like flights, hotels, and shopping, among others. We have also removed useful features from the search results page, like features that show flight information, and reduced functionality for some of our clickable maps – changes that have negatively impacted the experience of our European users. While many of these changes have benefited large online travel aggregators and comparison sites, there’s a different set of businesses that are unfortunately losing traffic as a result: it’s now harder for airlines, hotel operators, and small retailers to reach customers. They have reported that free direct booking clicks are down as much as 30% since we implemented our original changes.
And yet comparison sites are insisting that our changes need to go even further.
We have therefore proposed more changes to our European search results to try to accommodate these requests, while still meeting the goals set by the DMA. These include:
- Expanded and equally formatted units that allow users to choose between results that take them to comparison sites and results that take them directly to supplier websites when they are searching for products, restaurants, flights or hotels.
- Other new formats that allow comparison sites and suppliers to show more information about what is on their websites, like prices and pictures.
- New ad units for comparison sites.
Over the past three years we have engaged extensively with the European Commission and industry, including hosting more than 100 conferences and roundtables to seek feedback on these and other DMA changes. We acknowledge that the DMA requires some significant changes to our online services in Europe – but we do not believe that the end goal is to prevent search engines from innovating and competing.
While many stakeholders are happy with our changes, a few sites continue to demand more, such as a complete ban on anything that’s more sophisticated than a simple blue link to a website. This would prevent Google from showing people useful information like prices and ratings.
As a result, we need to understand how such changes would impact both the user experience and traffic to websites.
To do this, we will be running a short test to remove the free hotel features from Google Search for users in Germany, Belgium, and Estonia. The test will remove some of the features that have been at the focus of the debate, including the map that shows where hotels are and hotel results underneath it. Instead, we will show a list of individual links to websites without any of the additional features — similar to our old “ten blue links” format from years ago. Results will return to normal once the test ends.
We’re very reluctant to take this step, as removing helpful features does not benefit consumers or businesses in Europe. That’s why we have committed so much product and engineering time to constructive discussion informed by objective data. We think the latest proposal is the right way to balance the difficult trade-offs that the DMA involves. We still hope to be able to reach a solution that complies with the law and continues to provide European users and businesses with access to helpful technology.