Google is updating its search engine in the European Union to follow new rules from the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a regulation aimed at ensuring fair competition among digital platforms. These changes involve adjustments to how shopping, flight, and hotel search results are displayed, with the goal of giving more visibility to third-party services and reducing Google's own influence. The company has already faced two fines from the European Commission in July: 430 million euros for restricting choices on the Google Play Store and 460 million euros for favoring its own services over competitors. Google has 60 days to implement these changes, and if it fails to comply, it could face penalties of up to 5% of its global revenue. While the Play Store case is still ongoing, Google has already made significant changes to the store after losing a legal battle with Epic Games in the United States. The European Commission will now assess whether these adjustments meet the required standards. The new search results will give more prominence to price comparison sites like Expedia or Booking.com, while companies in these industries will appear with fewer details—only a link to their website, phone number, and address. At the top of search results, a specialized search engine will be featured, followed by two others with less detailed information. Additionally, carousels of hotels, restaurants, or airlines will appear based on the search, though real-time pricing information will not be shown. Google's algorithms will determine the order of these results. Nick Fox, Google's vice president for knowledge and information, expressed concerns that the changes could harm the user experience, favoring online intermediaries over local businesses and removing features people rely on daily. He noted a 30% drop in free direct bookings for European companies after earlier changes under the DMA. Internal tests with millions of European users showed dissatisfaction, with many needing to rephrase their queries to find the information they wanted. In 2024, a test removing hotel search features led to longer search times and a loss of over 10% of traffic to hotel websites. Kent Walker, Google's legal director, criticized the changes as a "product degradation" driven by a small group of complainants, arguing that regulation should improve, not worsen, consumer and business experiences. The European Commission has acknowledged that Google's proposed changes are a "significant step toward compliance" with the DMA and will continue to monitor the implementation.