Travel and restaurant search in Europe faces a major shakeup as Google revamps its results to meet strict EU antitrust demands. Aggregators like Booking and Expedia are set to benefit while Google warns of lower quality for users.
Google is rolling out a major redesign of its search results for users in Europe, prompted by the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the threat of heavy EU fines. The company is removing its prominent travel, hotel, and restaurant modules-features that used to dominate the top of search pages-in an effort to avoid further penalties from regulators.
In July 2026, the European Commission fined Google €460 million for favoring its own services in search results, specifically in shopping, hotels, transport, and sports.
Booking, Expedia, and other aggregators are expected to benefit most from this shift. With Google’s own modules pushed aside, third-party platforms are likely to regain top visibility in search, which could boost their referral traffic and revenue. Google has updated its documentation to explain new regional differences, including which features and carousels are now restricted or changed for European users.
The DMA is the main driver behind this change. It targets so-called "gatekeepers" and sets strict rules for how dominant platforms treat competitors. Google is not making these changes by choice; the company faces possible fines of up to 10% of its global annual turnover for violations. Its public warning about lower quality is aimed at both regulators and users, making clear that these changes are a response to legal pressure, not user demand.
In September 2026, Google launched a new version of its search results in Europe to comply with the DMA, affecting vertical modules for hotels, flights, and restaurants. The new layout now displays one specialized search service at the top, followed by two others with less data, and moves hotel, airline, and restaurant carousels further down the page. Key features such as real-time pricing have been removed from cards.
Google’s retreat in Europe is a rare example of regulators forcing a major change to a Silicon Valley product. The company’s warning about degraded results is both a message to lawmakers and a signal to users. By pointing to the DMA as the reason for any drop in quality, Google is preparing for user complaints and showing other markets what can happen when regulators step in. For now, aggregators are the main winners, but the long-term effects on user experience and publisher strategy will depend on how quickly the industry adapts to this new, more fragmented search environment.
Google, part of Alphabet Inc., is still the dominant search engine in Europe, with over 90% market share as of 2026. Last year, the company made more than $280 billion in global revenue, much of it from search advertising. The DMA’s enforcement is one of the most aggressive regulatory moves in the company’s history and sets a new standard for how tech giants must operate in the European Union.
According to a Reuters financial review, the European Commission gave Google 60 days to bring its search practices in line with the DMA and warned of periodic fines of up to 5% of the company’s global turnover for continued non-compliance. The Commission’s 153-page decision listed nine Google services that received preferential ranking over third-party competitors, which formed the basis for the crackdown.
