Google announces changes to comply with EU DMA

Google announces changes to comply with EU DMA

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Google announces changes to comply with EU DMA

Google has announced several changes as it seeks to comply with the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) which comes into force today.

As a designated "gatekeeper," Google owner Alphabet, along with Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft, must prove to regulators that they are allowing sufficient competition on platform services such as social media, ad platforms and search.

For Alphabet, Google Search, Maps, Ads, Shopping, Android and YouTube all come under the ruling.

In a blog post on Tuesday, competition director Oliver Bethell outlined how Google has moved to comply.

Users in the European Economic Area (EEA) will no longer see Google-owned services such as Google Flights prominently on the search results screen. Bethell says the search giant has also made changes including new "chips" (short cut buttons at the top of the screen) to make it easier to find competitor services.

Android

Android users in the EEA will find it easier to choose alternative default search engines and browsers to Google's Search and Chrome, with more choice screens at setup time. Similar measures are to follow for Chrome on desktop and iOS.

Ads services

Google says it has made a number of changes to the way data is shared, including with advertisers. The blog post does not go into detail except to say, "under the DMA advertisers and publishers in the EEA will be able to receive some additional data, which is shared in a way that protects user privacy and customers' commercially-sensitive information."

Users in Europe will be given additional opportunities to consent to, or opt out of, Google linking their activities between its services in order to serve personalised content and ads, via My Activity settings in account controls. Google says it's making "multiple upgrades" to its advertising products and tools to make them compliant.

In-app payments and billing

Google is making moves to disentangle in-app payments and billing from Google Play's payment services, as required by the DMA, expanding its user-choice billing (UCB) to games developers this week. It's not clear from the post what that means for other apps.

App developers will also be able to communicate about offers or lower-cost options available on a rival app store or the developer's website, said Bethell, in a thinly veiled pop at Apple which was this week fined £1.5 billion for restrictive practices in this area. He also made sure to point out that Android has always allowed users to download third-party apps and app stores, another area where Apple is in hot water with the European regulators.

He made no mention of any specific changes to Google Maps or YouTube, although these will be among the services that consumers will be able to delink from personalisation.

In a pitch for the moral high ground, Bethell insisted that, "Our goal has always been to build products that are helpful, innovative and secure."

Compliance brings inevitable tradeoffs, he regretted, with some search results going to "large aggregators" instead of "hotels airlines, merchants and restaurants." And for consumers some features developed "to help people get things done quickly and securely online," won't work in the same way anymore.

Alphabet will be hoping these measures are enough to hold off Europe's regulators, who have demonstrated an appetite for taking on big tech's quasi-monopolies.