Airlines, hotels warn Google changes may benefit large intermediaries

Lobbying groups representing airlines, hotels and restaurants on Wednesday warned that changes proposed by Alphabet's Google to comply with European Union (EU) landmark rules may drive users to large online search services at their expense. The comments from Airlines for Europe group that has Air France KLM and British Airways owner IAG as members, hotel group Hotrec, European Hotel Forum, Eurocommerce, Ecommerce Europe and Independent Retail Europe came after Google rolled out changes for app developers and users. Google together with five other tech giants have to be fully compliant with a list of dos and don'ts set out under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) on Mar 7. "It should not lead to situations where the economic power of large online intermediaries is further entrenched and where consumers are not presented with a variety of choices," the groups said in a joint statement about the planned changes. Some of the companies could lose as much as 50% of their online traffic and possibly millions of euros in revenue due to Google's changes to its search results, people with direct knowledge of the matter said. Google declined to comment. In its blog post on Monday, it said changes to search results give large intermediaries and aggregators more traffic and less for hotels, airlines, merchants and restaurants.<br/>