How Does Europe's Digital Markets Act Treat Booking.com?

Glenn Fogel says Booking.com is one of seven companies in the world treated as gatekeepers under Europe's Digital Markets Act, the law on large digital companies. Putting Booking.com on the same level as Google, Meta, or Amazon is absurd, and the company still obeys the law.

The qualifications, as he has read and heard them, are quantitative: market cap over a set period, and how many users a company has. The belief behind the designation is that Booking.com holds a dominant position selling hotels online in Europe. In talks with people in the European Union, he asked whether the only way to get a hotel is to come online and use Booking.com, how often they had used Booking.com versus other ways over the last five years, and whether everyone would compare travel histories and where they bought hotels.

The comparison is absurd. The law still stands, Booking.com follows it incredibly strictly, and a company must obey even when people think the law is bad for society.