Europeans hate Google Search's "blue links" format when looking for hotels, says company

If you live in Europe, chances are you may have come across Google Search’s new format when you’re looking to book hotels or accommodation. It only shows you the basic blue links format and removes features like maps and hotel-specific details to comply with the EU’s Digital Market Act (DMA).

That’s similar to Google’s early days. The “blue links” were previously tested in countries like Belgium, Estonia, and Germany. But now, in a recent update, Google says that European users hated it.

“People were measurably less satisfied with their search results and it took them longer to find hotels,” says Google’s legal director Oliver Bethell. He also mentions that traffic to hotels’ sites dropped, losing more than 10% on average, and it affected lots of European hotels.

“More people also gave up and did not find what they were looking for,” Bethell mentions further. It was so bad that Google has now decided to stop the test, and the Mountain View tech giant is now looking to talk with the European Commission to find a solution.

The EU’s DMA, at its core, wants to eliminate Big Tech’s dominance by preventing companies from favoring their own services over competitors. That sounds good on paper, especially since it grows competition in the market. Companies like Microsoft and Google, for example, no longer have a massive dominant power in the cloud sector.

But it still comes under scrutiny. Apple is recently getting a stick after its hotly-hyped Apple Intelligence is being held back from European users due to the DMA. So now, features that rely on AI, including those to improve Siri, will not be available in the EU at launch and are likely to be delayed until 2025 or even later.