Google's Travel Services Aren't a Focus of European Regulators Just Yet

Google may have been on the receiving end of another European fine but it looks like regulators have decided not to take closer look at its travel products – at least for the moment. At a press conference covering the tech giant's most recent antitrust discretion — for which Google received a a $1.69 billion (€1.49 billion) fine for abusing its dominant position in online advertising — the European Union's competition commissioner, Margarethe Vestager, said hotel and flight search were not current areas of investigation and that her team would be concentrating on Google's actions in two other sectors. “These [flights and hotels] are markets that develop… and Google is also changing its behaviour in these markets and this we will take into consideration when we investigate further where we have strong complainants in the local search and in jobs," she said. This latest development contradicted reports in 2017, suggesting the European Commission — which serves as the EU's executive arm — had set its sights on Google's burgeoning flights and hotels services. This appears, at least for now, not to be th