Dirk Auer Quoted in Brussels Signal on Google Search Changes Under the DMA
Brussels Signal quoted ICLE Director of Competition Policy Dirk Auer in an article on Google’s changes to Search results in Europe following a Digital Markets Act decision. The piece examines how the Commission’s interpretation of the DMA reaches features such as map directions and translation boxes, and whether the resulting changes make searches less useful while directing traffic toward comparison sites. Read the full article here.
Dirk Auer, director of competition policy at the International Center for Law & Economics, told Brussels Signal that “of course Google has a dog in the race”, but that “doesn’t make its claim any less true.
“Europeans searching for maps, hotels or flights are now getting a significantly worse product, and everyone involved knows it.”
“The more important point is that this outcome is the direct and intended result of how the Commission has chosen to interpret the DMA.
“The DMA stops a gatekeeper from ranking its own services above “similar” third-party services in search results. The legislature meant that as a narrow, clearly defined rule. The Commission’s July decision stretched that narrow rule to cover tabs, a “directions” button on a map, a translation box and even the Solitaire doodle, and closed with an order covering “any other button” pointing to a Google service.
“When Google showed that removing map links had degraded the service for users, the Commission replied that quality was “not relevant”. If quality is irrelevant and the rule catches everything on the Google Search page, then degradation is no longer an unintended side effect of enforcement.
“The point is that the DMA was supposed to protect European consumers and small businesses. Instead it is making information harder to find and pulling traffic from hotel and airline websites towards a handful of aggregators. It harms those very people it intended to protect.”