As part of attempts to comply with historic European Union tech legislation intended to curtail Big Tech’s power, Alphabet’s Google has detailed changes to search results and new tools for app developers to promote their wares on rival app stores and third-party apps.
The company announced the changes in a blog post seen by News.ng on Tuesday.
Google is already in a lawsuit battle against thirty-two European media organizations seeking damages of about €2.1 billion as it relates to its digital advertising practices.
Recall that on March 7, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Meta Platforms, and TikTok were tasked with acting as gatekeepers over millions of users’ and businesses’ access to their platforms.
“Today, we are sharing some more details about the changes we are making to comply, following product testing we announced earlier this year.
“The changes that we have made are the result of intensive work over many months from engineers, researchers, product managers and product designers from across the company.
“Throughout this process, we have engaged extensively with the European Commission, industry stakeholders and consumer associations, including through dozens of workshops, events and direct discussions,” Google wrote in the blog post.
Thetech giant explained that the changes to search results will result in fewer traffic for hotels, airlines, shops, and restaurants and more traffic for huge intermediaries and aggregators.
Users will also be prompted to provide permission before Google shares their data with other Google services and products as it plans to launch data portability software in Europe this week.
In addition to using Google Play’s payment system, app developers will now have the option to utilise other systems, and a new initiative will let them directly market their items to European users outside of the app.
Google is also set to introduce data portability software in Europe, which would facilitate developers in transferring user data to an external application or service.
We earlier reported that TikTok is also launching a data portability API to comply with new European regulations meant to curb the market dominance of Big Tech through a range of requirements and limits.
