Google has begun rolling out changes to European search results following the European Commission’s €460 million DMA fine. The redesign gives comparison services greater prominence while pushing hotel, airline and restaurant listings below them, with useful features such as real-time prices removed. Users outside the EU will be unaffected.
Google says “the changes mark the largest reduction in quality of service at the world's most popular internet search engine in its 29-year search history.” Google warns that the changes will worsen Europeans’ experience and boost intermediaries at local businesses’ expense.
The Commission’s own decision acknowledges that Google’s product units help users find what they are looking for. Yet it says those benefits are not decisive when assessing compliance: “The legislator deliberately opted against allowing for this sort of efficiency defence” (recital 189). The Commission recognises but nevertheless ignores the user benefits of Google’s integrated search results, including with respect to maps (recital 515), translations (recital 525) or sports scores (recital 573) as irrelevant to determining self-preferencing, leaving user interests to the assessment of compliance measures.
The Commission argues that Google could preserve useful features by giving rivals equivalent prominence. But with the resulting redesign now rolling out, Europeans face another reminder of the Digital Curtain: regulatory enforcement in practice resulting in the loss of features that users value. What’s worse here is that the Commission has explicitly disclaimed any concern for the impact its decisions are having on users.
