[mrweasel]

This is such a weird complaint, Google searches hasn't taken you to the websites of various hotels for a decade or more, maybe a few pages in they did, but the first page of search results have been booking sites and ads for booking sites for a long time.

If the booking sites are such a huge issue for the hotels, which I can honestly believe, then don't use them, or do collective negotiations with them and demand better rates.

The complaint about the maps button not being on the search page is rather funny, because I haven't used that in ages. I've been using search engines which has a ! operator, so !gm or !maps for 10+ years every time I needed a map, so I just didn't notice. While I haven't read the DMA rules, it does seem strange that they can't just link to Google maps.

[dns_snek]

As far as I understand it, the DMA forbids them from exploiting their dominance in the search engine space to promote Maps. This is similar to the mobile space where users must be presented with a choice of their preferred browser and search engine.

I believe they would be legally okay if they presented users with a choice of their preferred Maps provider (e.g. Google Maps, OSM, Bing, or Apple Maps), but they've decided to implement it in the most obnoxious way possible.