JAKARTA – lobby groups representing airlines, hotels and retailers are urging EU technology regulators to ensure that Google pays attention to their views, and not just major intermediaries, when making changes to comply with historic technology rules.
The Airlines for Europe group, which has members such as Air France KLM and owners of British Airways, IAG, as well as hotel groups Hotrec, European Hotel Forum, EuroCommerce, Ecommerce Europe, and Independent Retail Europe, in March expressed their concerns about the impact of the new rules.
The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) imposes a list of obligations and bans on Google and five other tech giants aimed at providing users with more choices and better opportunities for competitors to compete. However, these groups voiced concerns that such adjustments could cost their income.
In a joint letter to the European Union’s Head of Antitrust, Margrethe Vestager, and European Union Industry Head Thierry Breton, dated May 22, they said their concerns had been increasing since then.
“Our industry has serious concerns that the solutions and requirements under consideration to implement DMA could further increase discrimination,” they wrote.
“Initial observations show that these changes risk draining the company’s direct sales revenue drastically by giving more priority to strong online intermediaries because of the special treatment they receive,” they added.
The European Union Commission, which is currently investigating Google for possible DMA violations, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Google, which in a March blog post said changes to search results provided more traffic to major intermediaries and aggregators as well as fewer for hotels, airlines, traders and restaurants, did not make direct comments.
“We are concerned that the investigation of non-compliance only refers to the need to treat third-party services in a fair and non-discriminatory manner, without acknowledging European businesses that also offer their services at Google,” the groups said.