Google To Test Maps Removal in EU Hotel Search Amid Antitrust Pressure (reuters.com) 19
Google announced additional modifications to its European search results on Tuesday, following complaints from smaller competitors about traffic losses and amid potential EU antitrust charges under new tech regulations. The changes come as Google attempts to comply with the Digital Markets Act, which prohibits tech giants from favoring their own services and after hotels, airlines, and small retailers reported a 30% decline in direct booking clicks following recent platform adjustments.
Google's legal director Oliver Bethell said the new proposals include expanded search units offering equal formatting between comparison sites and supplier websites, along with new formats for competitors to display prices and images. The company will also test removing hotel map displays in Germany, Belgium, and Estonia. The Alphabet unit faces possible enforcement action from the European Commission, which began investigating potential DMA violations in March. Companies found breaching the regulations could face fines of up to 10% of their annual global revenue.
Google's legal director Oliver Bethell said the new proposals include expanded search units offering equal formatting between comparison sites and supplier websites, along with new formats for competitors to display prices and images. The company will also test removing hotel map displays in Germany, Belgium, and Estonia. The Alphabet unit faces possible enforcement action from the European Commission, which began investigating potential DMA violations in March. Companies found breaching the regulations could face fines of up to 10% of their annual global revenue.
USA continues to fall behind (Score:5, Interesting)
And why can't we in the us have laws like this?
Or would that be somehow too anti corporate.
The right to be forgotten, I laughed at because of the name at the time.
Now I dream of a day they can't just hose up all our information and resell it because I purchased anything.
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One party has people trained to think the government doing anything at all is automatically bad. Except when they yell about how the government should take better care of veterans. Gee, isn't that socialism?
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Government should do as little as possible because... doing stuff is expensive and we're already spending $6T a year. We need to quit doing so much with the government.
Veterans are a gov't created responsibility. When you ask a person to do something dangerous and they get hurt, you need to compensate for that. Thus, VA hospitals, etc. It's all a part of a function that can only be performed by government. Defense. We run it with about 1% of the population, so that 1% needs to be well taken care of
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"Most veterans were never in any more danger'
Every veteran has the prospect of being in such danger, and has to decide to join the military anyway. That's what's being compensated, the risk. When something bad happens, the USA has the obligation to compensate that too. States do it thru "workman's compensation" insurance. I was covered by that (only) when I volunteered to assist the US forces in Iraq as a civilian sci-tech advisor in Baghdad. But there's no other help for military folks that get hu
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doing stuff is expensive and we're already spending $6T a year.
Not doing stuff is also expensive. The US GDP is $27T so that's actually less than a quarter of it. Given that Russian and China are actively trying to destroy you and seem to be moving into a good position to do that by cutting off your trade links with the world, it's quite possible that you aren't spending enough and will soon lose out because the government isn't acting.
That's not to say that you should ever waste money. The average cost of a bribe is estimated at 20 times the money that the person take
Are corporate cancers a problem? (Score:2)
Answering your rhetorical questions:
Because the lottery winners in America can too easily bribe the cheapest politicians to rig the games in their favor.
My rhetorical questions on the monopoly topic:
Can customers select from real alternatives?
Can wannabe competitors enter the market?
Finishing the joke with a solution approach: If the answer to one of my questions is "No", then the monopolist's tax rate on profits should go up.
[I like the FP, even though it was mostly rhetorical, but I changed the Subject be
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The people you're describing aren't lottery winners.
Re: Are corporate cancers a problem? (Score:2)
The majority of them in fact are
Beg pardon? (Score:3)
Extending this out a bit suggests that every business has the potential to be removed from Google maps thus making mapping totally useless.
Or am I missing something?
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I don't think you're missing anything. Removing the maps from motel listings - how is this a good thing? Make it harder to find things. Get people more lost than they already are? Next they'll remove the listings from the maps. Then for each motel, you have to know the motel is there, get the address, type it into the search bar, and it'll show you the motel. But if there's a motel across the street, you have to know it's there before typing its name into the search bar.
Back to the AAA tour guid
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Google loves their malicious compliance. It's one way they like to bully governments.
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What is the exact solution that was proposed by these countries regarding hotel mapping? From what I read there was only a complaint with no remedy proposed. Google saying we will go back to blue links like we used to do when it wasn't an issue, is now an issue. These countries should mandate a solution instead of just complaining. Likewise, what exact solution do you propose solves the problem equally for all sides and all countries?
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It's the most fucking retarded thing ever.
If a hotel doesn't show up in Google Maps, there is ZERO chance of me booking that hotel, period.
If I understand the summary correctly, this isn't about removing hotels from Maps. This is about removing the map at the top of the search listings when you search for "Hotels in [insert city]". The EU's complaint, again, assuming I understood the summary correctly, is that having a map result makes you more likely to book through Google or through a direct link or whatever, rather than by seeing search results for Hotels.com or Expedia or whatever.
From my perspective, having a map result makes it easier
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I don't think you're missing anything. Removing the maps from motel listings - how is this a good thing? Make it harder to find things.
No, it's just as easy to find something. You just have to select an appropriate booking site, rather than relying on your search engine provider and maps provider also being a middleman and kingmaker - you're holiday at the whim of one company. Easy = others making decisions for you. Easy != good.
Terrible headline (Score:2)
No surprise, the headline is terrible. The article makes only one brief mention about maps - Google potentially not showing a map beneath search results for things like hotels and the like. All that will do is make it harder and less convenient for users to find what they're looking for.
The crux of the story is that Google has already made changes to their search results to meet the new EU legal requirements. Now European business are pissed because their traffic is already down 30%.
[Google] has since then tried to address conflicting demands from price-comparison sites, hotels, airlines and small retailers, among others The latter three groups said their direct booking clicks have fallen by 30% due to recent Google changes.
So this is what happens