Google Blog on DMA
blog.google
blog.google
That's because your search engine results are a joke, not because of the DMA.
If I search for 'hotel <city>', I get an ad from Booking.com, then some hotel ad, then an ad from Trivago, then some Google map with hotels (make sense, but all results there are sponsored by intermediaries), then Booking.com, then Booking.com again, then Expedia, then Tripadvisor, then Trivago.
If you only present me sponsored results from intermediaries, then don't be surprised that people only click on sponsored results of intermediaries.
If the booking sites are such a huge issue for the hotels, which I can honestly believe, then don't use them, or do collective negotiations with them and demand better rates.
The complaint about the maps button not being on the search page is rather funny, because I haven't used that in ages. I've been using search engines which has a ! operator, so !gm or !maps for 10+ years every time I needed a map, so I just didn't notice. While I haven't read the DMA rules, it does seem strange that they can't just link to Google maps.
I believe they would be legally okay if they presented users with a choice of their preferred Maps provider (e.g. Google Maps, OSM, Bing, or Apple Maps), but they've decided to implement it in the most obnoxious way possible.
Is what I'm assuming they're talking about?
Also
I use flights all the time. I think mostly because I've not found any of the intermediaries all that good. Google flights provides links to multiple places to buy. Usually I click the link directly to the airline.
I've looked at hotels but rarely use it. Hotel websites, unless they're a major chain, are often pretty crap so booking.com is what I generally use.
"Many Europeans" being tens of concerned users. Underwhelming.
Google is well known to ignore user feedback or provide user support, and magically now they care about that because it's convenient.
[1] Which purely by coincidence happen to fit their anti-dma agenda
You really think every annoyed user will go to some Google forum to complain about this?
It's mostly ineffective in Europe but I think it's probably targeted at Americans, in order to convince them that they shouldn't push for the same things in the US.
Their should be an open API standard and if airlines support that standard then any search service should be able to integrate any airline/intermediary service for pricing information. Then you get all the benefits of Google flights but it's not market dominance any more. And customers should be able add the sources they trust in their search configuration.
They do and have for years
Obviously we need to solve for all the security and cross border data issues etc etc. But we also need to bake in the UX innovations rather than just go back to the 90’s.
So I guess what I'm saying is that it sounds great, where do I sign the petition?
(I know this is not a completely accurate summary)
Set aside "who makes money" for a moment. In an ideal world, "here's the answer you were searching for, faster" is generally exactly what you want. It seems unfortunate if some other concern is leading to users not actually getting what they were looking for as quickly.
But, if Big Tech kills the forums and all communities say go proprietary like Slack or Discord I will not find no new answers after say 2020. It is a short time win for people that search but then we all starve because we killed the public internet .
I do find it annoying that I can't click on map results from the search results page, but it's not a huge effort to go to maps.
"We wanted to share some of the concerns we’re hearing"
First link of the concerned entity is to https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7166372... which shows some data. I haven't heard about "Mirai" (https://www.linkedin.com/company/mirai-espa-a-s-l-/) before but they describe themselves as: "Mirai is the hotelier’s partner in the common objective of maximising the potential of direct sales." which reads as an ad-driven middlemen?
Maybe if looking for a hotel on google it would be nice to actually list the hotels? And not the ads?
Is DMA going to hurt users of new generation AI products built by the next generation of market leaders?
That is, Alphabet is required to separate their various products and not use data from one to influence the other.
I am guessing this is what is making Flights more cumbersome. But i think we need a legal expert to explain exactly how the law is causing this.
From my personal perspective, I remember flight search being really really crappy before Google flights hit the scene in ~2012.
Companies like Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz, etc and the airlines themselves just weren’t getting the job done.
When Google flights gets refactored due to the regulations, my hypothesis is that we won’t see a spring of new innovation, but rather we’ll regress to the trajectory set by the old travel companies
Heck, if Google wanted they could publish some standard for exposing your site as a trip-booking tool that can appear right on a search results page like Flights does now, and if a page exposing that sort of embeddable widget ranks first in a search then it could display the widget above the results.
I don’t see the need to have this embedded in Google SERPs. This way, Google Flights can still link directly to airlines while having saner competition for flight aggregators.
Skyscanner was launched in 2003 and Momondo in 2006.
Comparative search engines for flights existed long before Google trampled into the market.
What stifles innovation IMO is trying to legislate consumer behavior.
Google never takes your money for the flight or manages a reservation.
(vs putting resources into 1000s of other google projects...)
Might sound like FUD at first glance, but I do remember this kind of dark patterns once being the norm across the board, especially in the early 2010s. Heck, even with GFlights I still find myself sometimes double-checking the airline's own booking tool (with reasonable attempt at isolation) just to be sure; gladly I never spotted any discrepancy this way.
Last time they blamed their obnoxious (and illegal) GDPR consent dialogs on the regulators, now they're doing it again with the DMA.