Google moans that regulators are ruining search when it was doing a perfectly good job on its own

Google has warned that changes it’s been forced to make to search in Europe will “degrade” the service – though regulatory requirements are the least of the problems facing Google search these days.

Back in July, the European Commission slapped Google with a €460 million fine in a long-running antitrust dispute that argued the search giant favored its own services in results for shopping, transport and sports results. That was deemed to be in breach of the EU Digital Markets Act. (Google was also hit with a €430m fine for “steering” users away from rival app stores.)

At the time, Google said that complying would require the search giant to “strip away” beloved features such as “instant pricing” and direct availability when booking flights, hotels and restaurants.

But under threat of a penalty of 5% of its global turnover, comply it has, with Google telling Reuters that the changes mark the largest reduction in quality to its search system in the company’s 29 years.

“To comply with ‌DMA ⁠requirements, we’re making significant changes to Search in Europe,” said Nick Fox, Google’s Senior Vice President for Knowledge and Information, in a statement to Reuters.

“These changes degrade the user experience for Europeans – boosting online intermediaries at the expense of local businesses, and removing helpful features people rely on every day,” he claimed. “Users outside the EU will not be impacted by these changes.”

What’s changing with Google search?

The changes – again, only in the EU – will highlight one specialised search engine, such as a hotel comparison site, at the top of the results, with two others shown with fewer details. Alongside that will the usual carousel of examples, but without pricing data. All rankings will be dictated by the algorithm, rather than opaque deals and agreements.

Google said that the last time it was forced to tweak its search in Europe, local businesses saw a drop of 30% in direct booking traffic.

The regulator’s aim is to level the playing field. For example, to avoid Google’s own Flights booking system being shown above other services, or for Google to prefer partners over more independent rivals.

Worse results or just different?

None of this means Google Flights or other specialised search engines won’t be shown, but instead means that which tools get shown will be decided algorithmically. Whether that helps boost competition or not remains to be seen.

But Google’s apparent concerns about degradation of search results are odd. As Ars Technica points out, the evidence Google gives that people were unhappy with a trial of these looming search changes is that they needed to run more searches – but Google often cites more search volume as evidence that people are happy with a tool. For example, one report points to Google’s claims that people like AI in search because they are performing more searches.

Beyond that, plenty of evidence suggests that Google’s search quality has degraded far worse in the last few years due to aggressive SEO rather than regulators. Consider the inclusion of often incorrect “knowledge panel” summaries. And now the advent of AI, with chatbots offering further competition.

From a business standpoint, the rise of summaries and AI chatbots means less traffic to original sites – research suggests people are less likely to click on links in AI summaries. Just the thing Google is accusing European regulators of causing with these mandated changes.

There have always been a few holdouts offering alternative tools, including Bing, DuckDuckGo and Brave, but it’s clear that Google’s 90%-market dominance hasn’t been good for search – including its own worsening results.

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