Google Degrades Search Results in Europe Under EU Antitrust Pressure
Alphabet's Google has rolled out changes to its search results in Europe as part of efforts to comply with EU antitrust regulators. The move is aimed at satisfying the European Commission, which fined Google €460 million in July for favoring its own services in shopping, hotels, transport, and sports results.
The changes are expected to degrade the user experience for Europeans, who will see one specialized search engine highlighted at the top of the page, followed by two others with fewer details. A carousel of hotels, airlines, and restaurants will be displayed below, but without real-time prices.
According to Google, these changes will boost online intermediaries like Expedia or Booking.com over local businesses and remove helpful features that users rely on daily. The company has tested the changes with millions of European users, who showed high levels of dissatisfaction due to having to retype queries to find what they want.
Google's senior vice-president, Nick Fox, said in a statement, 'To comply with DMA requirements, we're making significant changes to Search in Europe... These changes degrade the user experience for Europeans - boosting online intermediaries at the expense of local businesses, and removing helpful features people rely on every day.'
The European Commission had given Google 60 days to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) or risk periodic penalty payments of up to 5 per cent of its total worldwide turnover. This is not the first time Google has faced EU antitrust penalties; it has racked up a total of €10.38 billion over nearly two decades.