Nearly eight months after the European digital law DMA came into effect, Google will remove several offers from search results when searching for hotels as part of an experiment in Germany. To date, when searching for a hotel, three paid results from specialized search engines and comparison portals such as Booking.com or Check24 are initially displayed. Below this there is an interactive map with hotel entries where you can see at a glance the price of an overnight stay, the so-called free booking link. Below the map are other hotel entries that were not sponsored. Maps and free booking links should now disappear during testing.
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change only temporary
Google is thus meeting, at least temporarily, the demands of competitors in Germany, Belgium and Estonia who want to prevent travelers from booking hotels directly through Google search results. The US company shut down its flight search (“Google Flights”) in Europe in March, following complaints from flight search engines like Kayak.
The test will remove some features that have been at the center of debate, including the map that shows the location of hotels and the hotel results displayed below, Google general counsel Oliver Bethel wrote in a blog post. “Instead, we will display a list of individual links to websites with no additional functionality – similar to our old ‘Ten Blue Links’ format from years ago.” Once the test is complete, the results will return to normal. Google did not say how long the test would last.
As per the requirements of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), large online platforms are not allowed to give priority to their own offers. Google Search is one of the services that the EU Commission has identified as so-called “gatekeepers” within the meaning of the DMA. Requirements are imposed on them that are intended to enable greater competition.
Over the years, Google has often attempted to provide a selection of information as well as solid answers to users’ search queries. This has repeatedly drawn criticism from others, including specialist search engines, who accused the industry giant of unfair competition. With the test, Google now wants to make it transparent that neither consumers nor the hotel industry benefits when competitors’ demands are met.
(mho)
