Google published a changelog on some of its products and services that it plans to release before 6 March 2024 to EU users.
Companies like Google are reacting to the new Digital Markets Act, which aims to make digital markets fairer and more open. The EU has identified several large online platforms as gatekeepers and has created a list of obligations for them.
Gatekeepers or access regulators, for example, cannot prevent the removal of pre-installed applications on their systems or track end users outside of their primary platforms without user consent.
Google lists four changes coming to its services on The Keyword blog in direct response to the Digital Markets Act.
The company says:
Additional consents for linked services: We currently share data across certain Google products and services for specific purposes, including personalizing your content and ads, depending on your settings.
In the coming weeks, we will present European users with an additional consent banner to ask them if certain services can continue to share data for these purposes.
If the services are not connected (ie: not used by the user), some functions may be limited or unavailable. Users can change their preferences at any time from their Google Account settings.
Changes to search results: When you search for something like a hotel or something to buy, we often display information to help you find what you need, such as photos and prices, as part of our results.
Sometimes this can be part of a result for a single business, such as a hotel or restaurant, or sometimes it can be a selected group of related results.
Over the next few weeks in Europe, we'll be expanding our testing of a number of changes to the search results page.
We'll introduce dedicated sections that include a group of links to comparison sites from around the web and query shortcuts at the top of the search page to help users refine their search, including by focusing results only on comparison sites.
For categories like hotels, we'll also start testing a dedicated area for comparison sites and direct suppliers to show more detailed individual results, including images, star ratings and more.
These changes will result in the removal of certain features from the search page, such as the Google Flights section.
Selection screens: When using an Android phone, you can easily change your default search engine or browser.
Under the DMA, we and other designated companies will be required to display additional opt-in screens. You may start seeing them on Android phones as you set up a device and in your Chrome app on desktop and iOS devices.
Data Portability: For over a decade we've offered users the ability to download or transfer a copy of their data from more than 80 Google products.
We continue to improve Google Takeout, the Data Transfer Initiative and data portability more broadly. To meet the new requirements around moving your data to a third-party app or service, we'll soon be testing a data portability API for developers.
What are access controllers?
The Digital Markets Act establishes a set of strictly defined objective criteria to qualify a large online platform as an access regulator. In this way, the Digital Markets Act can and does focus on solving the problem of large, systemic online platforms.
These criteria are met if a company:
- has a strong financial position, a significant impact on the internal market and is active in many EU countries
- it has a strong intermediary position, meaning it connects a large user base with a large number of businesses
- has (or is about to have) an established and stable market position, meaning that it remains stable over time if the company has met the above two criteria for the last three financial years.
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