🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Data on Google’s changes fuels a disputed account

• Google says its Digital Markets Act (DMA) compliance updates have reduced results for travel firms and other direct suppliers, but others challenge that account.
• Google reports that airlines, hotel operators, and small retailers saw free clicks to direct booking pages drop by as much as 30% 1.
• The 30% figure comes from Mirai, a company that earns more when hotels shift bookings to their own sites instead of intermediaries 2.
• Mirai later found a smaller effect, a -0.8% change in direct bookings through hotel websites across Europe after the DMA updates 2.
• DMA critics say the law allows direct links, while it targets gatekeepers that boost their own services over rivals 2.

Europe’s travel search shift puts platform rules under strain

• The Europe-only search change gives more space to rival vertical search services like hotel, airline, and restaurant platforms, and it carries global weight as a DMA test on self-preferencing.
• If it works, regulators elsewhere may copy the approach, including the United Kingdom where the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK’s competition regulator, recently labeled Google as having “strategic market status” 3.
• The dispute tracks a U.S. antitrust case on Google’s search power where a court ruled Google violated U.S. antitrust laws 4.
• In that trial, Expedia’s former COO said Google ad spending rose tenfold over five years with no traffic lift after Google launched its own flight and hotel widgets 4.
• The decision will shape how designated gatekeepers place their own services next to third-party competitors.