Google, a subsidiary of US-based Alphabet, on Monday changed how online search results are displayed in Europe to comply with demands from European Union antitrust regulators. The company says the change will degrade the quality of the user experience and increase costs for European businesses. Google told Reuters that the change represents the biggest drop in service quality in the 29-year history of the world's most-used internet search engine. The EU has presented the change as leveling the playing field among businesses displayed on search pages, but Google sees it as favoring price comparison sites such as Expedia and Booking.com, which are related to hotels, airlines, restaurants, and other sectors. These sites will appear more prominently in search results than rivals that only list links, phone numbers, and addresses on their websites. In July, Google was fined 460 million euros ($534 million) for violating the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) by favoring its own services in search results for shopping, hotels, transport, and sports. The European Commission set a 60-day grace period for compliance, warning that failure to comply could result in periodic fines of up to 5% of global daily turnover. Under Google's new search results, one specialized search engine will be highlighted at the top of the page, followed by two others with less detailed information. The ranking is determined by Google's algorithm. A Google spokesperson said: "These changes to comply with the DMA will degrade the European user experience. They favor online intermediaries at the expense of local businesses and remove convenient features that people rely on daily. Users outside the EU will not be affected by these changes." According to Google, previous changes to comply with the DMA have already reduced free direct booking traffic to European businesses by 30%, and the company expects similar effects from this change. When Google tested these changes with millions of European users, it received strong complaints because users had to re-enter search queries to find the information they wanted. Over nearly two decades of disputes with EU antitrust regulators, Google has accumulated total antitrust fines of 10.38 billion euros.
Alphabet Inc Class CAlphabet's Google must degrade EU search quality and faces up to 5% of daily global turnover in periodic fines for DMA non-compliance.
Expedia Group Inc.Google's DMA compliance change will make price comparison sites like Expedia appear more prominently in EU search results, favoring them over link-only rivals.
