Greater than 20 worth comparability web sites throughout Europe on Wednesday criticised Google’s proposed modifications to its search outcomes, saying they nonetheless fail to adjust to EU tech guidelines and urged regulators to impose prices towards the Alphabet unit.
Google has been discussing with the comparability websites, inns, airways, eating places and retailers for greater than a yr now on how one can adjust to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which prohibits it from favouring its services on its platform.
Final month, it introduced its newest proposal, which incorporates expanded and equally formatted models to permit customers to decide on between comparability websites and provider web sites.
It might additionally carry again its previous “ten blue hyperlinks” format from years in the past in its place if it may possibly’t agree with its rivals. This format is now being examined in Germany, Belgium and Estonia.
The value comparability web sites, which embrace Germany’s Idealo and billiger.de, France’s Le Information, PriceRunner, Kelkoo and kieskeurig.nl and trovaprezzi.it, stated Google has not listened to their suggestions.
“Google has merely, repeatedly, ignored this suggestions, and as a substitute continued to iterate on the identical non-compliant answer for months,” they stated in an open letter.
“If Google has not taken suggestions under consideration after greater than 100 occasions, it may possibly solely imply one factor: Google is wilfully not complying with the DMA.”
When requested for remark, Google referred to its November 26 weblog submit the place it pointed to the numerous modifications it had revamped the previous yr to adjust to the DMA and discover a answer.
The web sites referred to as on the European Fee to behave towards Google.
“The Fee has opened proceedings towards Google for non-compliance. It should proceed with such proceedings, situation preliminary findings, and impose fines on Google, together with periodic penalty funds, to drive Google to lastly pay attention and comply,” they stated.
© Thomson Reuters 2024
(This story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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