With the European Union’s Digital Markets Act coming into effect this week, Google LLC, one of the designated gatekeepers, has had to get busy making a slew of changes to how it does business in Europe.

The Digital Markets Act, or DMA, is a piece of far-reaching legislation that has been in the pipeline for two years, giving companies enough time to prepare. The law is centered around anticompetitive practices, consumer privacy and ensuring so-called tech monopolies don’t push their dominant position. The EU describes the gatekeepers as “platforms whose dominant online position make them hard for consumers to avoid.”

With Google’s core product being its search engine, a product that has come under criticism time and again for its market dominance, Google said today it will make 20 changes that are mostly related to search results being less focused on Google and its partners’ products. In short, Google’s curation of search results won’t embody a preference.

From now on, in the EU, when someone sets up an Android phone, Chrome will no longer be the default browser, with Google now offering a selection of browsers to choose from. The same will go for search engines, which will soon happen on Chrome for desktop and iOS devices.

Google’s Play Store apps from now in Europe will produce options outside the app, while developers inside the app can promote alternative billing options. Developers can offer any billing system or make one of their own. While Android users have always been able to download third-party apps and app stores to their devices, Google says with Android 14, “third-party app stores work even better for users.”

The company says there will also now be updated settings where users can more easily decide how their data is being used, while advertisers will have to be more transparent about how they collect data.

“We have approached compliance with transparency and meaningful product changes, even where we have concerns that some rules will reduce the choices available to people and businesses in Europe,” Google’s Google Director of Competition Oliver Bethell said. “We do believe that consistent interpretation and enforcement of these new rules across all the designated companies will be critical in ensuring a level playing field for European businesses and consumers in the future.”

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