Google continues to find itself in hot water over its alleged antitrust tactics and monopolization of certain market segments. Now its parent company, Alphabet, seems to be ceding to EU scrutiny of its search practices. 

The company will reportedly begin testing changes to its search engine results in the EU to more fairly represent vertical search services (VSS) that target sectors like hotels, airlines, and restaurants.

The revamped search will display VSS results alongside Google’s own, with top-ranked vertical search engines displayed by default. Presumably, this is an attempt by Alphabet to appease the European Commission and potentially avoid Digital Markets Act (DMA) breach fees that can equal 10% of a company’s global annual revenue, which in Google’s case would be roughly $35 billion.

The move comes about a year after the Commission concluded that Google’s search service violated the DMA by putting its own services and products higher in results than those of its competitors.

Antitrust accusations aren’t new to Google

Vertical search services such as Booking.com, Kayak, and TripAdvisor focus on specific industries or types of content, as opposed to crawling the entire web. They are designed to only crawl the most relevant websites or databases for their vertical, and apply structured algorithms, such as price ranges or locations, to deliver results that are more accurate and specific

Following the Commission’s decision that Google was treating VSS sites unfairly, the company last June submitted a proposal that would create dedicated VSS boxes at the top of its search pages.

This isn’t Google’s first antitrust fine overseas (nor on the company’s home soil, where it has been deemed a monopoly in the ad tech market). In September, the EU hit the tech giant with a €2.95 billion ($3.47 billion) fine for “abusive practices” in its EU ad tech business. The company has racked up fines for other antitrust infringements as well, including €2.42 billion ($2.85 billion) for favoring its own comparison-shopping service.

“There is always a difficult balance when it comes to complying with regulations,” noted Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “Google seems to be complying to the degree it believes will satisfy European regulators, but in the end, I don’t think it will benefit consumers.”

The specificity of this compliance seems to be squarely targeted to the EU and the industries that concern the Commission the most; it is unlikely to spread elsewhere, Sag said. The optimal outcome, by contrast, would be Google collaborating more closely with regulatory bodies to “find broader and more pro-consumer reforms.”

However, Sag noted, while Google Search is “obviously one of the most powerful platforms in the world,” scrutiny of it may become misguided or even moot in the age of AI search.

Analysts anticipate that agents like Claude Cowork or Perplexity will increasingly surface information directly from the source (websites or research repositories), rather than performing traditional web searches.

Potentially improving visibility, supporting more competition

Particularly when it comes to search, fed-up regulators around the world continue to push back on Google’s market dominance.

“Traditionally, statistics show that most users will trust what they see at the top of a search page,” noted Erik Avakian, technical counselor at Info-Tech Research Group. “They don’t generally question it.”

That sort of placement alone can give a company a “significant advantage,” he said, as it can greatly influence and help shape user behavior on a large scale. “This [results placement] change is important and goes to the heart of how people access information, how they shop, how they travel, and how decisions get made.” Many of those decisions now start online, and often with a search, he pointed out.

Google’s move in the EU could result in more third-party services featured more prominently, which improves visibility and supports competition, said Avakian. “Over time, that usually amounts to a net positive benefitting consumers,” he said. “It gives them more choices and reduces the influence of any single platform quietly steering outcomes.”