> Hotels are concerned that direct booking clicks are down as much as 30% since our compliance changes were implemented. These businesses now have to connect with customers via a handful of intermediaries that typically charge large commissions, while traffic from Google was free.<p>That's because your search engine results are a joke, not because of the DMA.<p>If I search for 'hotel <city>', I get an ad from Booking.com, then some hotel ad, then an ad from Trivago, then some Google map with hotels (make sense, but all results there are sponsored by intermediaries), then Booking.com, then Booking.com again, then Expedia, then Tripadvisor, then Trivago.<p>If you only present me sponsored results from intermediaries, then don't be surprised that people only click on sponsored results of intermediaries.
Unfortunately, this blog post is completely untrustworthy, because the data isn’t public. The only public thing are the links in this section: "Many European users are raising concerns on message boards and in our help forums that they no longer see a useful Google Maps tab on our Search results page."<p>"Many Europeans" being tens of concerned users. Underwhelming.
If they really wanted to promote competition, Google will give an option on incorporation results from the price scanner service/airline of customer's choice in their search results.<p>Their should be an open API standard and if airlines support that standard then any search service should be able to integrate any airline/intermediary service for pricing information. Then you get all the benefits of Google flights but it's not market dominance any more. And customers should be able add the sources they trust in their search configuration.
There should be an open set of standards to allow users to select their search, travel, map, video, mail etc providers. You should get google mail results on bing search, Vimeo results on Google search, your travel bookings on any search engine or chat agent UI you choose.<p>Obviously we need to solve for all the security and cross border data issues etc etc. But we also need to bake in the UX innovations rather than just go back to the 90’s.
So, the gist of their argument is that DMA is bad because it is forcing them to disable certain features (some of which I found useful and miss) which is detrimental to search users because the results that THEY GENERATE are not good enough?<p>(I know this is not a completely accurate summary)
In EU Google still extracts answers from webpages so some of the time you do not need to go and visit the page. This feels parasitic to me . Other weird thing is that Google will put on top YouTube videos that might have the answer , but for this one I am not sure if most people this days would prefer a video then text with the response but makes me wonder if YouTube would not be part of Google if it would also be on top.
The stuff about flights is not clear to me. Is this about flights results in Google Search, or is it also about searching on Google Flights i.e. <a href="https://www.google.com/travel/flights" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/travel/flights</a> - I use Google Flights in Europe a lot and I haven't noticed any decline.
LOL<p>"We wanted to share some of the concerns we’re hearing"<p>First link of the concerned entity is to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7166372671595634689/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7166372...</a> which shows some data. I haven't heard about "Mirai" (<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/mirai-espa-a-s-l-/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/company/mirai-espa-a-s-l-/</a>) before but they describe themselves as: "Mirai is the hotelier’s partner in the common objective of maximising the potential of direct sales." which reads as an ad-driven middlemen?<p>Maybe if looking for a hotel on google it would be nice to actually list the hotels? And not the ads?
I travel a lot for work and corporate travel booking is still in the stranglehold of Amadeus/Sabre/Travelport intermediated booking agents and they suck – there's always something or the other that's broken – seat selection is not available, price is higher than direct or offers available elsewhere, loyalty points don't get accrued, etc – and the corporate travel agent insists they have to use their clunky tool.
The real problem is airlines and hotels reservation systems need to modernize and adopt modern web protocol standards that enable direct discovery and booking via any aggregator including search engines like Google etc. But unfortunately, airlines and hotels IT systems are lagging.
I wonder how much traffic Google has lost in Europe due to the steady collapse of search quality due to mismanagement?<p>Is DMA going to hurt users of new generation AI products built by the next generation of market leaders?
Google claims to stand for small business, but (my understanding is) part of the justification of DMA is to reduce the xonpetitive advantage of mega techs.<p>That is, Alphabet is required to separate their various products and not use data from one to influence the other.<p>I am <i>guessing</i> this is what is making Flights more cumbersome. But i think we need a legal expert to explain exactly how the law is causing this.
I love Google flights but can see the argument that it stifles competition and innovation. Not sure what the solution is, but a bunch of search result links sucks.
From a link in the referenced reddit post, you might be able to opt in to showing these results here: <a href="https://myactivity.google.com/linked-services?pli=1" rel="nofollow">https://myactivity.google.com/linked-services?pli=1</a>
> And there’s a greater risk that you’ll end up on a travel website advertising a low fare that jumps just before you make a purchase, with a message like “this fare is no longer available.”<p>Might sound like FUD at first glance, but I do remember this kind of dark patterns once being the norm across the board, especially in the early 2010s. Heck, even with GFlights I still find myself sometimes double-checking the airline's own booking tool (with reasonable attempt at isolation) just to be sure; gladly I never spotted any discrepancy this way.
Good on them for following the playbook. (1) Comply maliciously to anger your users, (2) Employ strategic gaslighting to misdirect that anger at the regulators, (3) Profit