An update on Google's compliance with the DMA | Hacker News Reader

An update on Google's compliance with the DMA

blog.google

33 pointsevilsaloon49 comments

I know everyone loves hating on Google here, but some of the changes that they were required to make are genuinely quite annoying. Maps results on the search page don't work like they used to. Clicking the mini-map doesn't open to Google Maps anymore, so you have to relearn some behaviours. I know it's minor stuff (for now), but as a long time happy user of Maps, this kind of thing does not benefit me, and I don't get a say in it.

1.) Click the mini map when the result comes up.

2.) Click the button in the bottom right of the mini map that says, "Open in Maps".

Voila!

Literally just one extra click or tap - what's the issue? Is a single extra tap really "genuinely quite annoying"?

>2.) Click the button in the bottom right of the mini map that says, "Open in Maps".

A lot of times actions like this are a lot harder on mobile devices even when they seem easy on larger screen. I know whenever I hit back on a youtube video or a google maps navigation and it turns into a little stamp instead of actually going back, it pisses me off because then I have try and hit a little X on the stamp sized video just to do what I wanted in the first place, which was 'go back to the previous app I was using'.

In many cases, a single extra action is known to cause pretty steep drop in discovery/engagement rates and it's the whole point of "default option" antitrust debates.

If the user is determined, they'll press on and discover it, as I and others have. If they're not, then they won't. Perhaps a drop in discovery/engagement suggests that using that feature wasn't as vital as others thought it was?

I'm not interested in subjective arguments but one clear thing is that there is a significant number of people who don't have a good sense of discovering tech features.

I can respect that. I guess I'm just not sure how to have a discussion around discovery/engagement without also understanding why someone would or wouldn't be interested in discovering more, but hey... that's why I'm not in that part of the industry.

Edit: And perhaps this is more of my ignorance speaking, but failing to understand subjective interests feels emblematic of a broader issue around people being addicted to algorithmically-generated content, or being glued to their phones. There's less interest in understanding what someone actually wants to "discover" and "engage with" and more interest in just ensuring we keep them engaged regardless. That feels... ick? But again, this is ignorance on my part, so perhaps that sentiment is misplaced.

Where I am (France) there is no such button in the mini map.

The workaround I found, after at first assuming that the maps integration was broken, is to click the directions button underneath the map. This opens Maps and draws a route from my current location to the address you searched. Which you then have to dismiss and zoom to what you were looking for. So a few clicks + navigation.

It's the principle though. It's making my user experience worse and I think it's fair for Google to point that out.

If that is what was needed to be compliant with DMA, then it makes a mockery of the whole thing.

All the wailing and gnashing of teeth, and it just takes another click to be compliant and everyone is happy? What a waste of everyone's time if it were really that simple and what all the fuss was about.

That is Google's choice. They weren't allowed to give Google Maps as the only option. Rather than implementing a way for the user to choose which site to use for maps they decided they would rather remove the feature altogether.

It makes sense, though. Google doesn't want to send business to a competitor - that's giving them a leg up on you.

While the EU may punish Google, it shouldn't expect them to like it.

I agree. Google definitely has an unfair advantage, but ultimately the services that want to compete don't offer compelling features over the ones provided by Google. I recently had to book a flight, and I want to book through the airline's site, but when sorting by price on Google flights I get a million different comparison sites that offer slightly less on a ticket, messing up the whole sort. At this point just kill Google, or tell these comparison sites to eat shit. If Google starts to abuse a monopoly position to exploit users then we can talk about brining in competition, but the competition right now sucks and I don't care to support them.

Using maps from google's search always requires 1 more click. Why not go to maps.google.com directly? Are you also googling "gmail" to go to gmail?

Too late too slow. Google in European Union feels already today like a different website in comparison to Google USA where there is an AI answering (which is totally not enabled in Europe).

Meanwhile the crowds slowly adopting asking ChatGPT & Co about hotel recommendations and ChatGPT delivers.

And in Europe I need to open maps.google.com to search for places because a direct link from google.com is not allowed. It's a joke...

Europe has good intentions but the execution makes it fall behind... and they will realise when it's too late.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Interesting. Is that something they do with geofencing or by TLD? If I go to google.eu, I get redirected to google.co.uk. After Brexit, is this by design on theGoog's part to not have to abide by EU laws? Do I need a VPN so my IP appears to actually be from within the EU?

I'm really curious to see differences in how theGoog behaves.

just use a VPN. The main difference is that Gemini is sprinkled into Google in the US and in Europe it's the old Google (without Gemini)

You say the lack of forced AI answers with their accompanying russian-roulette-esque accuracy as if that's a bad thing.

The horrible AI driven answers that are more wrong than right are very much present in the EU though.

This feels like when someone toxic is telling you the story of a argument, but somehow only half the details are available

There's a lot of what in this post, and not enough why

This is a great argument for breaking up Google because they've created an anti-competitive environment where other parties cannot succeed without Google gatekeeping them.

Sincerely asking... help me connect the dots there? Suppose Google is broken up into separate businesses, one for search and one for ads. Is the idea that the search side would have no incentive to show hotel search results on a map? I'm not seeing the connection between the breakup proposal and the features discussed in the post.

No the idea would be that the search would lose its ability to be a monopoly because Chrome + Search + Maps + Android... would stop artificially propping it up in the market. There would be many search engines and the ability for one to drastically impact other industries with UI changes would go away.

>There would be many search engines and the ability for one to drastically impact other industries with UI changes would go away.

Honestly that's just wishful thinking. Generally these monopolies, regardless of 'artificial propping up' tend to be fairly natural monopolies and these sorts of changes just make it harder on people to get the experience they had before and prefer.

Not true, look at what happened to Internet Explorer after MS was forced to allow people to uninstall it.

It's not clear to me what point you're making. What happened to IE specifically when MS was forced to allow people to uninstall it?

The same happens in android, you get a prompt to select your browser in a new phone (not sure if that is eu or not), similar in ios.

But there already are many search engines?

I recently got a couple of new windows laptops and Edge defaulted to Bing, but after changing away from Bing it is relentlessly trying to make me set Bing as the default search engine every few days.

Note that I am using Edge here, not Chrome. Last time I installed Chrome I think it forced me to pick a default search engine, and didn't endlessly harass me to pick Google as its default (I use duck duck go)

I don't see how they could break up Google without forcing MS and Apple to also be broken up too since they're doing the same things with forcing Edge/Bing and Safari on everyone.

MS has all the same issues as Google, this is why they can release inferior product and have it survive in the market. I also use DuckDuckGo as would many other people if you severed Google Search's monopolistic lifelines.

Edge, Bing, and Safari do not have majority market share. It would still please me to see these companies broken up. They have their own obnoxious and/or harmful practices that are the result or of attempts to be monopolistic.

I would be surprised to learn that MS does not have majority market share in desktop OSes. Windows still seems to be the default choice - Mac OS and Chrome must be tiny in comparison?

Edit: Windows is 73%, closest is Mac OS at 15% (which was way higher than I expected) https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...

Presumably the affiliate links (including hotel booking links) would not be there to create a perverse incentive.

what this is showing is simply more of google abusing their monopoly. making linking to maps from search harder and inconvenient for users does not help the users, nor smaller independent companies, nor really anybody at all. but that's because even with complying with the law, google is purposefully using its monopoly to make compliance as annoying and unhelpful as possible.

what should be happening is that the provider of the maps app is nothing to do with google search and then if your favorite map provider can plug-in to the search results in a seamless way it wouldn't be an anti-trust issue at all. it would benefit all parties. instead google opts to, and who can expect different, maximize the annoyance to their already captive users and minimize their negative business impact (e.g. sending anyone to somebody else's map app).

but they certainly aren't going to voluntarily break themselves up because some regulation that can be implemented in a way that's annoying to their users. who still have no viable other options, btw.

the root cause of the annoyances the users are now facing is both caused by googles monopolistic behavior in the first place and then them weaponizing their own captive users to push back on any regulations trying to stem it. a significant contributing factor is regulations like these are do more harm than good.

the right answer for abusive monopolies is to 1) don't let them form and 2) break them up when they do. chicken-shit regulation like this will only have the predictable result - avoidance, annoyance, no-real-change. and, as you alude, simply make everything worse for everyone.

Why should the other parties succeed? IE the aggregator sites? Is it merely because they exist?

If I make an aggregator aggregator, should I be able to demand placement on Google search results above mere aggregator sites?

Other parties should succeed because it's good for me, the consumer. If I need to take a trip, it's not in my interest at all for Google to be in the value chain and for me to pay the monopoly penalty as a consumer.

But Google was prevented from showing you direct links to directly book on the suppliers website. How is forcing users to go through an aggregator(and include them in the value chain) beneficial for users?

Ha, the experiment will run in Germany, Belgium and Estonia. Estonia seems to be added for not making it too obvious they are targeting the decision centers of the EU.

I don't think I've ever read a company whinging so much about having to obey the law. Comes across like a petulant child.

theZuck can do it just as well. Bezos was/is pretty good about it. After Amazon, he's still doing things like suing the gov't for not awarding his company contracts for missions he cannot achieve yet.

Apple has their share as does Microshaft. Once you climb to the top of the ladder, you get awarded to behave this way. At least that's the way it is perceived.

A petulant child does not explain the negative consequences of what he is being asked to do using metrics and specific stakeholder feedback.

It does not help consumers to have outside parties run roughshod over businesses. Regulations are necessary, but to be effective, they must be measured, in both senses of the word. To be implemented carefully, they must be subject to criticism, even by the party being regulated.

Do you have any specific concerns with the points raised by Google here?

I think it's highly disingenuous of you to claim that the regulators in question are acting without any plan or purpose even if those might not be immediately clear. "If you don't like how the table is set, turn over the table."

> but to be effective, they must be measured

Google can't really be trusted to provide measurements proving that they should be regulated, though.

If they want the problem to be fairly studied, they're free to publish their datasets.

Google is not attempting to prove that they should be regulated, they are attempting to prove the that regulation the EU is imposing is not having the effect that EU claims it has. Whether they can be trusted or not will be up to the court in the EU whenever they present evidence.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-apple-ceo-cook-c...

Clearly you haven’t read Apple’s responses. They were even worse

Your unspoken premise is that the law in question is reasonable.

I'll speak it. The law in question is reasonable.

I don’t think no they are whining about obeying the law. In fact they are saying that with this reduced data that they are showing on the front search page, comparison sites are wining and direct to consumer airlines sites are losing. This would be fine for bigger airlines as they can still buy ads at the top of the page but not for the smaller airlines as they sometimes benefitted from the direct links that Google provided to those niche airline sites . In the end , the winner is going to be the one with the bigger pockets and not necessarily the best flights .

>While many stakeholders are happy with our changes, a few sites continue to demand more, such as a complete ban on anything that’s more sophisticated than a simple blue link to a website.

We can but dream...

Don’t threaten us with a good time.

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