Google has been fined nearly a billion dollars (€890 million) in two unfair business practice cases, and the changes required may affect travel especially travel searches.
One case involves requiring Google to stop preventing app developers from using their own payment systems; the one that may have a big travel effect is about giving preference to its own sites in searches, including for flights and hotels. In Europe, at least, the changes must be in place by September 21st, or huge daily fines kick in.
One of the things that is likely to disappear, at least for European users, is instant pricing in the Google Flights tool. European Commission investigators found Google gave systematic advantages given to its own shopping comparison tools, hotel booking widgets and flight aggregators as well as putting them at the top of search pages with visual enhancements including thumbnail images, interactive filters, and instant pricing that other services didn’t have access to.
