As Thursday’s deadline to comply with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act nears, Google on Tuesday announced a series of product adjustments.

First, a bit about the DMA. The landmark act seeks to clamp down on anticompetitive practices by dominant digital platforms that hurt small businesses. Last year, the European Commission named six major tech companies—Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft and China’s ByteDance—“gatekeepers” of its new Digital Markets Act. These companies will have to comply with the strict set of rules.

Non-compliance could result in fines up to 10% of a company’s global turnover, going up to 20% in case of repeated breach. The European Commission also has the authority to impose remedial measures, such as selling a business or parts of it, or banning the company from certain acquisitions. For more details, read: EU lists six tech giants as ‘gatekeepers’ under Digital Markets Act.

The changes: In a blog post, the tech giant outlined changes to its search results, screen choices and consent measures related to its products and services.

For search results, the tech giant said certain features have been removed (like the Google Flights section) to help the visibility of businesses.

Google is also offering users the flexibility to select their preferred search engine or browser on Android devices.

Apart from this, the company is discontinuing its default practice of linking personal data across various user accounts for its products and services—which was meant to “personalize” content and ads. This change is driven by the DMA’s strict prohibition of using user data for advertising without explicit consent. In the blog post, Google highlighted that users can “choose if they want to continue to share data across Google services by linking them”.

In the context of consent measures, the tech giant noted that users may see “new consent banners asking them whether they would like to link their Google services”.

In other important changes, app developers will be able to use an alternative billing system, instead of only Google Play’s in-app billing system. Google’s billing system has been a thorny issue, particularly in India recently. But an alternative billing system still doesn’t mean developers can bypass payments. App developers can use other billing alternatives, but they would still have to pay a cut, albeit 4% less than what they otherwise would (more on this in our lead story today: Is Google’s Play Store charge evil or monopolistic?)

Google is also set to launch data portability software in Europe, simplifying the process for developers to transfer user data to third-party apps or services, the company said in the blog post.

Google had initially announced several changes specific to European users in January and has since refined these adjustments following input from EU antitrust regulators, app developers and general users.

Other tech giants are also preparing to deploy measures to comply with the DMA. Apple is set to allow third-party app marketplaces for the first time on iPhones—which is being deemed the biggest overhaul since the App Store launched in 2008. TikTok announced a data portability API as part of efforts to comply with the DMA.