Google’s Spam Policy Change Shows the Costs of DMA Compliance

Google announced last week that it would modify its site reputation abuse policy for users in the European Economic Area (EEA) in response to a European Commission investigation under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The policy was part of a broader set of anti-spam measures Google announced in 2024 to improve the quality of search results. The policy allowed Google to demote websites that hosted low-quality third-party content designed to benefit from the site’s existing search rankings. For example, a reputable medical website could face a ranking penalty if it hosted a low-quality third-party page promoting online casinos simply to take advantage of the site’s search authority. The policy generally did not apply to legitimate advertising or sponsored content that was clearly distinguished from a publication’s own content.

Nevertheless, the European Commission warned that the policy could affect a common way for publishers to monetize their websites. Accordingly, the Commission opened an investigation to determine whether the policy violated the DMA’s requirement that Google apply transparent, fair, and non-discriminatory conditions to search rankings. The Commission’s concern is notable because the policy was designed to prevent publishers from using their search rankings to promote low-quality content—not to restrict legitimate publishing or advertising.

Google’s decision to change the policy therefore matters to users, not just publishers. Weakening the policy in the EEA could make it easier for low-quality third-party content to benefit from the search rankings of reputable websites, potentially making search results less useful and more susceptible to spam. Google is making the change to address regulatory concerns, but the episode illustrates a broader risk of the DMA: Rules intended to promote fairness and competition can sometimes constrain product features that companies introduced to improve the quality and security of their services.

Google’s policy change follows a major announcement just a few weeks earlier by Apple to resolve the company’s long-running disagreements with the Commission over its App Store commission structure. In both the Google and Apple cases, Commission staff publicly lauded the companies’ decisions and announced that they would monitor implementation to ensure DMA compliance.

At one level, these developments represent a positive change from the recent pattern of enormous fines. In the two and a half years since the DMA’s gatekeeper obligations began applying in 2024, the Commission has issued major fines against Apple (€500 million) and Meta (€200 million) in 2025, as well as a record fine against Google (€890 million) earlier this summer. Because it has extracted such massive fines from American firms, the DMA has been ripe for evaluation under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. Indeed, the day after the Google fine, the Trump administration declared it would open a Section 301 investigation into the EU’s discriminatory targeting of American digital platforms.

Brussels may finally be getting the message that the United States will not sit idly by while the DMA is used to extract massive fines from American companies based on worldwide turnover. This approach notably departs from other digital regulatory regimes, such as Japan’s Mobile Software Competition Act, which bases fines on domestic sales. Such a shift would surely be welcome: Rather than engaging in regulatory and trade tit-for-tat, the United States and Europe should cooperate to enhance Western innovation and productivity to counter China’s quest for global techno-economic dominance.

Still, DMA enforcement burdens American gatekeepers with a costly compliance regime even when enforcers abstain from imposing fines. Indeed, one study found that the DMA imposes collective annual compliance costs of roughly $1 billion on Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft—five of the seven gatekeepers so designated by the DMA.

It’s no accident that American firms make up the supermajority of gatekeepers. Andreas Schwab, a member of the European Parliament and rapporteur for the DMA, said the law should focus “on the biggest problems” and should not include a European company “just to please [U.S. President Joe] Biden.”

While the DMA targets American firms, European consumers and innovation are caught in the crossfire as efforts to comply often degrade gatekeepers’ services.

The evidence abounds that the DMA has resulted in demonstrable consumer welfare losses, chilled procompetitive behavior, and even harmed small businesses. For example, in a sincere but ultimately futile attempt to come into compliance with the DMA’s prohibitions on self-preferencing, Google removed hotel features from Google Search in Europe, resulting in a more than 10 percent reduction in traffic to hotel websites, and eliminated users’ ability to access Google Maps from Google Search directly. Unsurprisingly, 35 percent and 33 percent of European consumers surveyed between April 28 and May 15, 2025, reported declines in the quality of online map and search services, respectively, since the DMA went into effect.

Little has changed over the past year. In June, Apple announced that the DMA’s interoperability mandates forced it to delay the release of Siri AI in Europe to avoid giving rival third-party AI assistants direct access to users’ sensitive private data without the necessary privacy and security protections. Google’s decision to roll back a key provision of its anti-spam architecture in the EEA is the latest example of the Commission pressuring American companies into changing their offerings for the worse.

Although the Commission has refrained—so far—from slapping Google with another major fine, that welcome change of pace provides only partial relief. The Commission said that opening its investigation did not prejudge whether Google violated the DMA, yet its own announcement highlighted the law’s threat of fines of up to 10 percent of a company’s worldwide annual turnover. Faced with the prospect of such a penalty, Google had a powerful incentive to change its policies. The resulting change, presumably made under this pressure, is yet another example of the DMA being wielded to compel leading American technology companies to degrade their products.