Google submits new EU proposal in bid to dodge major antitrust fine

While American platform giants still default to algorithmic self-preferencing, Europe has made one thing clear: neutrality is not negotiable. Google’s latest “Option B” proposal—offered just ahead of a crucial July workshop with EU regulators—illustrates how Digital Markets Act (DMA) enforcement is reshaping search economics and signaling the limits of platform-led vertical integration.

This isn’t just a regulatory appeasement play. It’s a strategic pivot wrapped in compliance.

Google’s proposed “Option B” makes room for two distinct result boxes atop its search pages in Europe: one for vertical search services (VSS)—such as aggregators or comparison platforms—and another for direct supplier links, covering hotels, airlines, restaurants, and transport providers. Crucially, the supplier box will appear below the VSS box and won’t bear Google branding. In effect, this segment offers competitors a dedicated slice of visibility—and brands a cleaner path to traffic—without the veneer of Google integration.

It’s a technical tweak. But the choreography is deliberate: Google is ceding prime screen real estate to neutral links, reducing the optics of favoritism without completely overhauling its commercial model. What’s more telling is the framing: the proposal explicitly says this change “does not create a Google VSS.” That language isn’t incidental. It’s a structural admission that even a neutral-looking vertical box, if run by Google, can still attract scrutiny under the DMA’s self-preferencing ban.

Under the EU’s DMA, companies designated as gatekeepers—like Alphabet—face a sharp inversion of incentives. Vertical integration, once the core monetization lever in platform search, now becomes a liability. The DMA doesn’t just penalize abuse; it redefines default behaviors as anticompetitive. In this new framework, visibility must be earned or shared—not claimed by algorithmic fiat.

Google has spent two decades optimizing user flows to reduce bounce rates and internalize traffic. But the Option B model implicitly accepts external leakage as a regulatory cost of doing business. That’s a profound shift in platform strategy—akin to accepting margin compression in exchange for reputational preservation. Europe, unlike the US, is enforcing structural separation by design rather than punishment. Option B’s architecture represents a first adaptation to that reality.

Google isn’t the only US tech major recalibrating under EU pressure. Amazon has already begun offering third-party sellers more prominent placements in response to similar concerns, and Apple has partially decoupled App Store billing requirements. But what sets Google’s Option B apart is the degree of platform neutrality it attempts to perform—not merely accommodate.

The real risk here isn’t fines (even if up to 10% of global turnover stings). It’s that a precedent gets locked in. If Option B becomes the Commission’s benchmark for acceptable vertical neutrality, the architecture of search itself could start resembling utility-like models: high-volume, low-control, regulated visibility frameworks where algorithmic discretion is limited by external design. That’s not a minor compliance burden. It’s a business model overhaul in slow motion.

There’s no ambiguity in what’s at stake. The EU’s message to Google is: “You are no longer a storefront. You are infrastructure.” That changes the platform’s role from market participant to market enabler—requiring not just fairness in results, but architecture that prevents the appearance of unfairness.

In the US, litigation-based scrutiny still focuses on intent and harm. In Europe, the DMA flips that logic: dominance plus preference equals liability, no matter the outcome. Google’s cautious language—“genuinely concerned about real world consequences”—reads less as resistance and more as hedging. The Option B proposal reflects this recalibration.

It’s not just about satisfying regulators. It’s about preserving optionality: holding onto just enough algorithmic control to avoid commodification, while conceding enough visibility to prevent structural remedies being imposed unilaterally.

Option B isn’t a strategic leap forward. It’s a fallback plan designed to meet the lowest viable threshold of compliance without dismantling core monetization logic. But in doing so, it reveals something deeper: Google understands that the platform era is entering a new phase in Europe—one where curation must yield to structural neutrality.

This isn’t a pivot toward a new product vision. It’s a measured retreat that keeps the algorithm intact while conceding space at the surface. What looks like flexibility is actually insulation—against precedent, penalty, and permanent loss of advantage. Strategic hedging, not reinvention, defines this phase of compliance.

Google is testing how much it can give up—screen space, visibility, perception—without surrendering its foundational leverage: data, defaults, and user flow. Option B isn’t a concession to rivals. It’s a calculated buffer against irreversible platform dilution. And for now, that buffer is what Big Tech calls progress.