Is Competition Really Only One Click Away?
What the DMA’s Google Maps experiment tells us about contestability in digital markets
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For years, large digital platforms have defended their market positions with a simple argument: if users prefer their services, it is because those services are better. Competition, the argument goes, is always “only one click away”: in other words, reaching a competitor is as simple as clicking a little bit below in search results or writing the website address of another company in the browser’s search bar
From this perspective, platform design choices may be convenient, but they do not meaningfully restrict competition.
This claim sits at the heart of many policy debates about digital markets. If users can easily switch, then regulators should worry less about defaults, integration, or interface design. If switching is costly or unlikely, however, then even subtle design choices can shape market outcomes.
In January 2024, European regulators effectively put this claim to the test.
Natural Experiment
The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) aims to increase contestability in digital markets dominated by so-called “gatekeepers.” One of its core concerns is self-preferencing: situations in which a platform uses control over one service to steer users toward another.
Online mapping services provide a particularly clean setting to study this issue. For years, Google Search and Google Maps were tightly integrated. When users searched for a location, such as a restaurant, shop, or landmark, Google displayed a prominent, clickable map at the top of the results page. With a single click, users could open Google Maps.
To comply with the DMA, Google changed this design for desktop users in the EU beginning in January 2024. Clickable maps and direct links to Google Maps were removed from search results. Users could still see a map, but accessing Google Maps now required additional steps.
Figure 1 illustrates this change. The map is still displayed, but it is no longer clickable, and the familiar shortcut to Google Maps is gone. In effect, Google Maps lost its one-click advantage, at least for EU desktop users.
Crucially, this change did not occur outside the EU: the same platform and services operated elsewhere, with only the choice architecture differing.
This created a natural experiment: what happens to user behavior when a dominant service loses a powerful default?
What Users Did
If competition truly were only one click away, removing that click should have made it easier for users to discover and adopt alternatives. One might expect more exploration or switching to competing mapping services.
That is not what we observed.
Instead, EU users reacted by searching more. Searches for both “maps” and “google maps” increased sharply, by more than 20 percent, relative to non-EU countries. In other words, when the shortcut disappeared, users actively took extra steps to reach mapping services.
More strikingly, searches for “google maps” increased just as much as searches for the more neutral term “maps.” This matters because these two queries reflect very different intents. While “maps” could, in principle, lead users to alternative services, “google maps” signals a clear preference for the incumbent.
The added friction did not redirect users toward competitors. It primarily led them back to Google Maps.
More Competition Did Not Materialize
Looking beyond search behavior to actual usage reinforces this conclusion.
Overall traffic to Google Maps did not meaningfully decline after the DMA change. Desktop visits remained essentially unchanged, and mobile traffic, which was not affected by the design change during 2024, shows no corresponding shift. What did change was how users reached Google Maps: organic search traffic increased substantially, replacing the traffic that previously came from clickable maps embedded in search results.
By contrast, we find no robust increase in searches for or traffic to competing mapping services such as Bing Maps or OpenStreetMap. Apple Maps shows some suggestive patterns, but these effects are small and constrained by ecosystem factors. Even where alternatives exist, they capture only a negligible share of user attention.
The message is clear: removing a default advantage changed navigation paths, not market structure.
Contestability ≠ Neutrality
These findings highlight a distinction that is central to the DMA but easy to overlook in practice: choice neutrality does not guarantee contestability.
From a formal perspective, the post-DMA search interface is more neutral. It no longer steers users directly to Google Maps. Yet neutrality alone did not produce competitive pressure.
Why? Online mapping services are a hard case for contestability. Users hold strong beliefs about quality and reliability. Habits are deeply ingrained. Learning a new interface takes time. And viable substitutes, at least from the user’s perspective, are limited. In such environments, removing a shortcut may reduce default bias, but it does not fundamentally alter preferences or beliefs.
As a result, users respond rationally: they incur a small additional cost to continue using the service they already trust.
Implications for Regulators
The Google Maps case should not be read as evidence that the DMA is ineffective. Rather, it illustrates the limits of uniform remedies in markets with very different competitive dynamics.
The DMA successfully removed a one-click advantage and altered user pathways. What it did not do, at least in this context, was meaningfully increase contestability. That gap matters for enforcement going forward.
If the goal is to foster competition, regulators may need to consider market-specific and multi-layered interventions, especially in settings where user beliefs and habits are strong. Monitoring compliance with formal rules is not enough; understanding how users actually respond is essential.
These lessons are unlikely to be specific to online mapping services alone. More broadly, they highlight how difficult it can be to ensure contestability in digital markets where user choices are shaped by habits, learning costs, and strong beliefs about quality.
As regulators apply the DMA to a wider range of services, and as new digital markets continue to emerge, this case underscores the importance of closely examining actual user responses, rather than relying on how choice is presented on paper. Interface changes can matter, but their competitive effects will depend on market-specific features, including the availability and perceived quality of alternatives.
The broader takeaway is therefore not about any single technology or market, but about regulatory design. Ensuring contestability may require a combination of tools that go beyond default removal, tailored to the ways users search for, and adopt digital services.
About the research: This study examines how users responded to a change in Google’s search interface introduced to comply with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Beginning in January 2024, Google removed clickable maps and direct links to Google Maps from desktop search results for EU users. We exploit this policy-induced change using a difference-in-differences design comparing EU countries to non-EU countries unaffected by the reform. Combining weekly Google search data with website traffic estimates, we analyze how users adjusted their search behavior and access to mapping services. We find that searches for both “maps” and “google maps” increased sharply in the EU, but this did not translate into meaningful traffic gains for competing mapping services. Overall usage of Google Maps remained largely unchanged, suggesting that removing default advantages alone may be insufficient to ensure contestability in markets with strong incumbents and limited substitutes.
This post is based on research published in the Marketing Science and is included in the Platform Papers references dashboard:
Pape, L. D., & Rossi, M. (2026). Is Competition Only One Click Away? The Digital Markets Act’s Impact on Google Maps. Marketing Science.
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