Google Calls for an EU DMA “Reset”

Apple isn’t the only Big Tech firm complaining about the Digital Markets Act, which was specifically designed to prevent these companies from continuing to abuse their market power. Google, too, has issued a public complaint about the regulations. A suspiciously similar complaint.

“The Digital Markets Act (DMA), intended to create a more level playing field, is causing significant and unintended harm to European users and many of the small businesses it was meant to protect,” Google senior director of competition Oliver Bethell writes. “This week we detailed these impacts in our response to the European Commission’s consultation on this new law and provided our thoughts on how to improve it.”

Google says that the DMA has triggered unintended consequences: In requiring the Google stop linking directly to airline and hotel sites in its search results, it must instead link to intermediaries, many of which charge for inclusion, raising prices for consumers and reducing traffic to EU businesses. On Android, Google says that the DMA forces it to remove “legitimate safeguards” that protect users from scams and malicious services when customers install apps outside the Play ecosystem.

But the biggest issue, perhaps, is that being innovative while trying to navigate this “complex and untested” set of new rules is delaying the release of new features in the EU. Which, come to think of it, is exactly like the Apple complaint. That was issued on the same day. Coincidentally.

Google has proactively made changes to its products to comply with the DMA, it says, but the complexity of the DMA and the overlapping rules within the EU are undermining these regulations.

“We call on the Commission to ensure that future enforcement is user-driven, fact-based, consistent, and clear,” Bethell says. “We should have a single-minded focus on benefitting European businesses and consumers and ensuring that they benefit from high-quality products and services. DMA compliance should improve digital markets, not come at the expense of security, integrity, quality, or usefulness.”