Is Competition Only One Click Away? The Digital Markets Act Impact on Google Maps
20 Nov 2024
15:00 -16:00
Times are shown in local time.
Open to: All
Sinyi Seminar Room, Cambridge Judge Business School
Trumpington St
Cambridge
CB2 1AG
United Kingdom
Join our Economics and Policy seminar
Speaker: Dr Michelangelo Rossi, Télécom Paris, Institut Polytechnique de Paris
About the seminar topic
This paper examines the impact of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) on consumer behaviour, focusing on changes in Google’s search result presentation in the European Union (EU). Specifically, it investigates the effects of Google’s removal of clickable maps in search results, a modification implemented in January 2024. This change forces users to perform additional searches to access Google Maps or alternative mapping services, thus increasing search costs.
Using a difference-in-differences approach, we compare Google search volumes from EU to non-EU countries before and after the implementation of the DMA. By eliminating Google Maps’ advantage of being only one click away from Google Search users, we find that EU consumers search significantly more for online mapping services. We measure a 25% and 18% increase in Google’s search volume for the query terms maps and Google Maps, resulting in an excess of 34,407,000 and 8,901,000 searches over 6 months, respectively. This search increase suggests potential exposure to alternative mapping services.
However, searches for services like Apple Maps and Bing Maps also rose, but not as significantly. Moreover, traffic data shows a non-significant decrease in visits to Google Maps, suggesting minimal migration to alternative services. These findings indicate that removing Google’s one-click advantage can lead to higher search costs for users without significantly boosting the discovery or adoption of alternative mapping services in the short run.
Speaker bio
Michelangelo Rossi is an Assistant Professor of Digital Economics at Télécom Paris, CREST, Institut Polytechnique de Paris and is also a CESifo Research Network Affiliate. Michelangelo works primarily on Digitisation, and the Design of Online Platforms.
He co-organises the Paris Seminar Series on Digital Economics and the joint Digital Economics Seminar. Michelangelo obtained his PhD in Economics from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in 2020. During his PhD he visited the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.
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