I’m not justifying the EU here, I’m just pointing out that Google is not the neutral deliverer of organic web searches that it pretends to be.
As for your phone book analogy, there’s no equivalency. Phone book business listings had a set price for all comers based on size of listing or ad, and basic listings either cost the same or were free.
Google auctions its ad space, so if you are paying, say, $2.00 per click for certain key words, a competitor can offer Google more money for the same and bid up the cost of an ad. Additionally, Google makes all paid ad activity available for anyone to view so competitors can see each others’ activities real time, allowing large advertisers to quickly shut out smaller competitors by bidding up prices at will. Too few people actually understand the way Google operates and why they’re seeing the search results, paid and organic, that they see.
It is what it is, and Google is free to run its business this way, just as I freely do not use it, either as a consumer or advertiser.
I personally like to use google, because I like the returns it gives me when I search.
The chance of anything I am likely to buy to be cheaper than what Amazon or Walmart are selling it for are nearly zero anyway.
If that changes, I will change search engines.