Google was fined 890 million euros and given until September 21 to stop favouring itself, and by the same morning EU hotel results had already been rebuilt. Meanwhile named publisher CEOs said out loud that blocking Googlebot is on the table, Reach put an audited number on what the referral collapse costs, and Yelp handed ChatGPT the local data it is suing Google over. Here is what moved.
The DMA Decision Lands, and the SERP Changes the Same Morning
Three stories from one ruling: the penalty and the clock, the fight over what compliance actually requires, and the redesign that showed up in EU results within hours.
- EU Fines Google 890 Million Euros, Gives It Until September 21 to Comply Two decisions: 460 million euros for self-preferencing in Search, 430 million for Play steering, with 60 days to comply or face penalties of up to 5 percent of daily global turnover. The detail buried in the Commission’s summary is the one to watch: Google has proposed how the ruling’s principles would apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode, pulling generative surfaces into DMA remedy talks for the first time.
- Google Says DMA Forces Feature Cuts. A Lawyer Says That Is a Choice Kent Walker says compliance means stripping instant hotel, flight and restaurant pricing out of EU search. Competition lawyer Thomas Hoeppner says the DMA requires no such thing: the decision orders fair ranking, not feature removal. Google is evaluating an appeal, not filing one. The eighteen industry bodies that petitioned Brussels in March complicate the small-group framing.
- Google’s EU Hotel Search Splits Into a Multi-Pack and a Direct-Site Module Hours after the fine, EU hotel queries started showing a Hotel Multi-Pack that makes users choose a travel provider before a hotel, plus a Hotel Websites module surfacing official sites with prices. Each provider effectively becomes its own search engine inside Google. One specialist’s observation, not a Google announcement, so baseline your hotel SERPs now.
Publishers Stop Threatening in Private and Start Naming Names
The crawl-for-traffic bargain is being renegotiated on the record, and one set of audited accounts shows what the old deal is now worth.
- Publisher CEOs Say Blocking Googlebot Is Now on the Table Mike Reed at USA Today, Neil Vogel at People Inc. and Paul Bascobert at Reuters all say cutting Google off is under active evaluation, while The Economist says it is not. The trap is mechanical: one crawler serves both AI answers and blue links, with no separate AI Overviews opt-out, so blocking is a switch and not a dial. Note the widely shared traffic chart was wrong and later corrected.
- Reach’s Dividend Cut Shows the Ceiling on Monetizing Harder Britain’s largest commercial news publisher reported Google referrals down 55 percent and halved its dividend. The arithmetic is the lesson: a 49 percent RPM gain against a 40 percent audience drop still left digital revenue down 11.4 percent. Yield is a partial hedge, not a fix. Reach also cut its publishing rights to a 15-year life, which quietly encodes the whole thesis.
Who Supplies the Answer, and Who Gets Paid Inside It
One rival buys the local data Google was accused of hoarding, and Google names the ad formats that live inside its AI answers.
- Yelp Feeds ChatGPT the Local Data It Is Suing Google Over OpenAI licenses Yelp reviews, ratings, photos and business details, closing ChatGPT’s weakest surface. The part to notice is Request a Quote working inside ChatGPT, which captures the lead before anyone reaches your site. Yelp is currently suing Google over local self-preferencing and just armed Google’s biggest AI rival with the same corpus.
- AI Max Exits Beta as Google Names Its First AI Mode Ad Formats AI Max is out of beta with more than 500,000 advertisers, and Google named its AI Mode formats: Highlighted Answers places labelled sponsored links inside the generated answer itself, alongside contextual sitelinks and Direct Offers. Every performance figure here is Google’s own, disclosed to investors. Feeds and landing pages now carry the signal keywords used to.
- Adthena’s ChatGPT Ad Index Shows 7,378 Advertisers, Mostly Unranked The first public recurring count of who is buying ads inside ChatGPT. Read it carefully: visibility is share of prompts, not share of spend. The most useful detail is that the most contested US prompts are vendor-comparison queries in one vertical, which is what bidding on conversation shapes rather than keywords actually looks like.
Today’s Quick Hits
- Google Emails Users When Their Maps Review Isn’t Published Google now notifies reviewers when a submission is filtered, saying automated systems judged it may breach Maps content policies, and offers an appeal. The catch: only the reviewer can appeal, never the business, and most reviewers will not bother.
- Google Ads API v25 Kills Lifecycle Goal Resources Version 25 removes CustomerLifecycleGoal and CampaignLifecycleGoal, breaking automated goal configuration and forcing code rewrites. It also adds YouTube Shorts engagement metrics and a loyalty retention goal, which signals Google building optimisation around retention rather than only acquisition.