Google is rolling out one of the biggest changes to its European search experience in decades as it attempts to comply with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act, warning that the new layout could make Search less useful while increasing costs for local businesses.
Reuters reported that Google has changed how search results appear across Europe after receiving a €460 million ($534 million) fine in July for favoring its own services in shopping, hotels, transport and sports results.
The Verge similarly reported that searches involving hotels and flights will now give greater prominence to price-comparison services, following the EU’s finding that Google had improperly prioritized products including its own Shopping, Flights and Hotels services.
Rival search services move higher in the results
The redesigned results change which businesses occupy some of Google Search’s most valuable positions.
According to Reuters, specialized vertical search services such as Expedia and Booking.com will receive more prominent placement in search results. One specialized search provider will appear at the top, followed by two others offering fewer details.
Below those results, Google will display a carousel of hotels, airlines or restaurants, but information such as real-time prices will be removed. Local businesses may instead appear through more basic listings containing links, telephone numbers and addresses.
The Verge described the change as giving price-comparison sites greater visibility over Google’s own vertical products, directly altering a search interface that previously integrated Google’s own travel and shopping tools more deeply.
The rankings themselves will still be determined by Google’s algorithm, Reuters reported.
Google says the changes will hurt search quality
Google has strongly criticized the required redesign.
Nick Fox, Google’s senior vice president for Knowledge & Information, shared that the company was making significant changes to comply with the DMA but argued they would degrade the user experience for Europeans, while benefiting online intermediaries at the expense of local businesses.
Google described the redesign as the largest reduction in Search quality in its 29-year history.
The company said previous DMA-driven modifications had already caused a 30% decline in free, direct booking traffic to European businesses. Testing of the latest design with millions of European users also showed high levels of dissatisfaction, according to Reuters, with some users needing to repeat queries to reach the information they wanted.
Users outside the EU will not receive the changes.
Search regulation is becoming product architecture
The dispute demonstrates how competition regulation is moving directly into product design.
The European Commission gave Google 60 days to comply after the July fine or risk periodic penalties reaching up to 5% of its total worldwide turnover. Google has accumulated €10.38 billion in EU antitrust penalties over nearly two decades.
For product teams, the important issue is not simply whether one competitor ranks above another. Search interfaces determine which businesses receive traffic, which intermediaries gain leverage and how quickly users reach transactional information.
The EU wants those interfaces to provide competitors with a fairer opportunity to reach users. Google argues that doing so removes functionality people value.
That tension makes Europe an increasingly important experiment in a larger question for platform builders: when a dominant product’s convenience comes partly from integrating its own services, how much of that integration can remain before better product design becomes unfair competitive advantage?
