Google Changes Search Rules European Union, Businesses Are Worried About Not Being Detected
Google Illustrations (Firmbee.com)
BRUSSELS, - Lobby groups representing airlines, hotels and retailers are urging the European Union's technology regulator to ensure Google takes their views into account.
Google is being asked not only to consider large intermediaries when making changes to comply with important technology regulations. The Airlines for Europe group, which includes Air France KLM and British Airways owner IAG, hotel group Hotrec, European Hotel Forum, EuroCommerce, Ecommerce Europe and Independent Retail Europe in March expressed their concerns about the impact of the new rules. Reporting from CNA, the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) imposes a list of dos and don'ts on Google and five other technology giants.
The goal is to give users more choices and a better chance for its competitors to compete.
However, the groups raised concerns that the adjustments could hurt their revenues.
In a joint letter to EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager and EU industry chief Thierry Breton dated May 22, they said concerns had continued to grow since then. “Our industry has serious concerns that current DMA implementation solutions and requirements may further increase discrimination,” they wrote.
“Preliminary observations suggest that this change risks severely draining companies' direct sales revenues by giving more advantages to powerful online intermediaries because of the preferential treatment they will receive,” they said.
Google said in a blog post in March that changes to search results were giving more traffic to intermediaries and large aggregators and less traffic to hotels, airlines, merchants and restaurants.
“We are concerned that the non-compliance investigation refers only to the need to treat third-party services in a fair and non-discriminatory manner, without any recognition of European businesses that also offer their services on Google,” the group said.