The Digital Markets Act promised fairer search. It’s failing.

SEO professionals don’t agree on a lot. However over the previous decade, we’ve come collectively across the conviction that Google has abused its dominant place, that it systematically favors its personal merchandise over higher options, and that one thing should be executed to create fairer competitors in search. 

In 2022, the European Union handed the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a sweeping regulation designed to curb the ability of tech giants. It got here into power in March 2024.

Business teams celebrated. Commerce publications ran optimistic headlines a few new period of digital equity.

In 2024, I wrote that it was “a much-needed piece of laws.” Two years in, the proof is evident: The DMA will do extra hurt than good.

Properly-documented abuses 

The Digital Markets Act arose from comprehensible frustrations with well-documented abuses. 

Google spent years rating its personal purchasing service on the prime of search outcomes whereas systematically burying opponents like Foundem and Kelkoo on web page 4, the place no one would ever discover them. 

The corporate’s inner paperwork, uncovered by EU investigators, revealed that Google Buying “merely doesn’t work” on its deserves, so Google gave it an algorithmic enhance unavailable to anybody else. 

The journey trade watched as Google Flights consumed the market share of progressive startups like Hipmunk, which had supplied genuinely higher consumer experiences by displaying complete journey prices, together with baggage charges and connections. 

Hoteliers noticed Google Motels siphon away direct bookings. Native companies watched as Google prioritized its native pack over natural outcomes.

The sample was unmistakable: Google recognized profitable verticals, launched competing merchandise, then used its search monopoly to ensure their success.

These weren’t aggressive benefits however unfair ways, and the EU was proper to establish them as such. It took over 10 years to fine Google £2.1 billion for the shopping search abuse alone. The DMA was supposed to repair this by setting clear guidelines upfront, forcing gatekeepers to deal with all companies equally earlier than abuses might take root. 

For these of us who had watched shoppers lose visitors to Google’s vertical search engines like google regardless of having superior content material, the promise was intoxicating: Lastly, algorithmic neutrality. Lastly, truthful competitors primarily based on content material high quality reasonably than company possession. Lastly, an opportunity for the following era of search-dependent companies to compete.

Dig deeper: EU puts Google’s AI and search data under DMA spotlight

What customers really expertise

But, two years into implementation, the fact seems to be nothing just like the promise. Probably the most complete evaluation comes from Nextrade Group, which surveyed 5,000 European consumers throughout twenty member states in mid-2025. 

The findings? 

Two-thirds of respondents reported needing extra clicks or extra complicated search queries to seek out what they want on-line. Amongst frequent searchers, exactly the customers Most worthy to our shoppers, 61% mentioned searches now take as much as 50% longer than earlier than the DMA.

Forty-two % of frequent vacationers reported that flight and lodge searches had worsened considerably. Greater than 40% mentioned they might really pay to revive the performance that they had earlier than March 2024. 

When customers are prepared to pay for one thing they beforehand obtained without cost, regulation has failed catastrophically.

The European Centre for International Political Economy conducted a separate survey of 3,500 consumers throughout Central and Japanese Europe and located related outcomes. 

Eighty % had by no means heard of the DMA, it solved issues they didn’t know existed, but 39% reported that routine on-line duties had turn into extra cumbersome since early 2024. 

Why does it matter? 

As search engine marketing professionals, we should confront this reality: Customers most popular the built-in Google expertise we spent years complaining about.

Earlier than the DMA, looking for “lodges in Paris” displayed an interactive map with photographs, rankings, real-time availability, and costs — all accessible with out leaving the search outcomes web page.

That integration has been dismantled as a result of Google Search and Google Maps are designated as separate core platform companies, and their seamless cooperation constitutes prohibited self-preferencing. 

Customers should now click on by to separate companies, repeat their searches, and lose context. Regulators name this truthful competitors. Customers name it a worse web.

The enterprise affect: Worse metrics throughout the board

The enterprise metrics assist what shoppers report feeling. Following the DMA’s implementation, click-through rates on Google Hotel Ads decreased by 30% in affected European regions in comparison with unaffected markets. Direct bookings by Google Resort Adverts fell by 36%. That is all regardless of theoretically fairer visibility in search outcomes. 

These are companies dropping income as a result of the mechanism connecting searchers to companies has been intentionally degraded. 

In the meantime, Google’s search monopoly stays totally intact. 

The corporate nonetheless processes over 90% of European search queries. The distinction is that now the search expertise delivers measurably worse outcomes for customers and measurably worse outcomes for companies paying for visibility.

The enforcement downside: Fines don’t work

The DMA requires Google to deal with competing vertical search companies (flight comparability websites, lodge reserving engines, purchasing aggregators) with the identical prominence as its personal choices. 

In response, Google examined a model of its lodge search that eliminated maps, eliminated structured listings with photographs and availability, and displayed solely 10 blue hyperlinks. Customers hated it. 

Motels noticed a visitors crater. Google documented the catastrophic consumer satisfaction scores and offered them to the Fee as proof that integration serves consumer wants, not simply Google’s pursuits. 

The Fee discovered itself in an unattainable place: Power Google to keep up the worst expertise within the title of equity, or acknowledge that some integrations genuinely profit customers even after they benefit Google’s merchandise.

Google responded to preliminary findings of non-compliance by making incremental changes that protect the substance of its benefit, whereas creating simply sufficient ambiguity about whether or not it’s following the foundations. 

When the Fee objects to 1 implementation, Google proposes one other that differs in type however not impact. This course of can proceed indefinitely as a result of the underlying downside, Google’s monopoly in search, stays untouched. 

For an organization with annual revenues exceeding $300 billion, regulatory fines are merely a price of doing enterprise. The Fee fined Google €2.4 billion for purchasing search abuses and breaking antitrust guidelines. The corporate paid and continued working largely as earlier than. It should do the identical with DMA fines. 

The uncomfortable actuality is which you can’t regulate a monopoly into behaving competitively. You may solely break the monopoly itself.

The pace downside: Regulation can’t preserve tempo

The European Fee should monitor 23 core platform companies throughout seven gatekeepers, whereas every firm releases updates repeatedly:

• Algorithms change each day 
• Options launch weekly
• Product roadmaps evolve quarterly

By the point the Fee identifies a possible violation, conducts workshops with stakeholders, points preliminary findings, permits the corporate to reply, and publishes a ultimate determination (a course of taking 12-18 months), the underlying know-how and enterprise fashions have moved on. 

Google launched AI Overviews in Europe one week after receiving preliminary findings of non-compliance for self-preferencing in conventional search. The corporate basically introduced that, whereas regulators debate whether or not Google Flights ought to rank above Kayak, Google is shifting to a essentially completely different search outcomes web page the place AI-generated summaries exchange hyperlinks totally. 

The DMA contemplated regulating 2024’s search panorama. Google is already constructing 2027’s.

What ought to regulators do as a substitute?

Whereas I’m not a regulator, I’ve been doing search engine marketing for 15 years. For my part, regulators ought to redouble efforts to deal with precise structural monopolies reasonably than impose guidelines on how platforms should function. 

The DMA tries to control platform conduct whereas leaving monopoly energy intact. That is like making an attempt to cease water from flowing downhill by prescribing which route it should take. The water will discover one other path, and everybody will get moist within the course of.

If Google’s dominance in search really stifles competitors, maybe the answer isn’t to control the way it shows outcomes however to interrupt its monopoly altogether. The US has thought of requiring Google to divest Chrome; such structural treatments would possibly succeed the place behavioral guidelines have failed.

If the priority is that Google leverages search dominance to benefit its promoting enterprise, separate the 2. 

If the fear is that controlling each the search algorithm and the content material (YouTube, Google Information, Google Buying) creates irresolvable conflicts of curiosity, then require differentiation. 

These actions can be slower, extra legally complicated, and extra politically troublesome than passing the DMA. They’d additionally really work.

Briefly, regulators ought to deal with creating circumstances for competitors reasonably than micromanaging each product determination. Which means enabling real information portability so customers can change companies simply, taking their search historical past and preferences with them. 

This additionally means utilizing conventional antitrust enforcement aggressively for the most important abuses, like Google systematically burying opponents on web page 4, unique offers that lock out rivals, and acquisitions designed to remove nascent threats. 

The geopolitical actuality

The DMA’s first two years have demonstrated that ex-ante guidelines aren’t any quicker — investigations nonetheless take 12-18 months — and much much less efficient than conventional enforcement. 

The geopolitical penalties threaten to undermine European pursuits far past digital markets. In December 2025, the Trump administration threatened retaliation towards the EU for what it characterised as discriminatory concentrating on of American know-how firms. The Workplace of the USA Commerce Consultant explicitly named European firms, together with Spotify, Siemens, SAP and DHL, as potential targets for brand spanking new restrictions. 

From Washington’s perspective, the DMA seems to be much less like competitors coverage and extra like industrial coverage disguised as regulation. 

Whether or not that characterization is truthful issues lower than the political actuality: Brussels finds itself caught between home stress to reveal powerful enforcement and exterior stress that threatens broader commerce relationships.

Dig deeper: Google outlines risks of exposing its search index, rankings, and live results

The flawed resolution to an actual downside

The DMA promised to allow the following era of search-dependent companies. It promised to cease Google from utilizing its search monopoly to benefit its vertical merchandise. It promised fairer competitors for lodges, airways, ecommerce websites, and your complete ecosystem of companies that depend upon natural search visitors. 

Two years in, Google’s monopoly stays intact, consumer expertise has measurably degraded, enterprise metrics have worsened, and no significant new competitors has emerged. 

For these of us who spent years documenting Google’s abuses and advocating for intervention, this failure is spectacular. 

If regulators can’t discover methods to interrupt up long-standing monopolies (now over twenty years outdated for some platforms), what hope is there to deal with rising challenges in AI search, voice search, or no matter comes subsequent? 

Younger firms have a proper to compete in digital markets. Regulators should create circumstances the place real competitors is feasible, not regulate away the signs of monopoly whereas leaving its foundations untouched.

We had been proper about the issue. The DMA is just the flawed resolution.