Google Overhauls European Search Results to Comply with EU Digital Markets Act
Google is modifying its European search engine to comply with the Digital Markets Act, warning of severe service degradation and drops in direct business traffic.
Google is once again forced to modify its search engine in Europe, and this time the company is not hiding its dissatisfaction. According to a Reuters report, the tech giant will implement significant changes to how search results are displayed in the European Union in an effort to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and avoid further fines. Google claims these modifications will result in the largest degradation of service quality in the search engine's history.
The EU Core Dispute and Compliance Pressure
At the center of the dispute is the EU's requirement that tech giants are not allowed to give preferential ranking to their own services over competing offerings. Earlier this year, Google was hit with a 460 million euro fine for allegedly abusing its search dominance to promote its proprietary services.
According to Reuters, under the new layout, Google will highlight a single specialized search engine at the top of the results page, followed by two additional services displayed with fewer details. Such services include platforms like Expedia and Hotels.com. Below them, a carousel of hotels, airlines, and restaurants will appear, but useful information such as real-time pricing will be removed.
Impact on Businesses and Previous Regulatory Actions
In practice, this means comparison sites and aggregators may secure a more prominent placement in results at the expense of direct hotel, restaurant, and business websites. However, Google is not entirely removed from the equation: according to the report, its algorithm will still determine the ranking among the displayed services.
This confrontation is not entirely new. Google already introduced changes in March 2024 to adapt its services to the DMA, but shortly afterward, the European Commission launched an investigation against the company, alongside Apple and Meta. Regulators argued that Google continued to favor its own services, for instance by displaying Google Flights above competitors in flight-related searches.
Google portrays the European demands not as a market correction, but as a direct blow to the product.
"These changes harm the user experience for Europeans—boosting online intermediaries at the expense of local businesses and removing useful features people rely on every day," said Nick Fox, Google's senior vice president for knowledge and information, to Reuters.
According to the company, previous changes implemented to meet DMA requirements already led to a 30% drop in free and direct booking traffic for European businesses, and it estimates the new move will trigger a further decline. The Commission has given Google 60 days to comply, but the company has not yet disclosed when European users will begin seeing the new search results.
