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- 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.
