An important deadline has just passed for the world’s largest technology platform companies to notify the European Union (EU) that they are gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Have seven companies officially recognized as meeting the criteria: Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, ByteDance (TikTok), Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp), Microsoft and Samsung. Companies on the list have a market cap of more than €75 billion ($82 billion) and own a social platform or app with at least 45 million monthly users or 10,000 active business users.
EU Commissioner Thierry Breton’s statement says it will “check their submissions now and appoint the gatekeepers for specific platform services by September 6,” and after that the companies have just six months to comply with the DMA’s rules.
Reuters reports that TikTok parent company Bytedance disputed the listing, noting that Booking.com informed regulators it expects to be listed next year.
According to Breton, the new rules contain a number of important points:
They can no longer lock users into their ecosystem.
They can no longer decide which apps you should have pre-installed on your devices; which app store to use.
They will be incapable of “self-preference”: exploiting the gatekeeper advantage by treating their own products and services more favorably.
Their messaging apps will have to work with others.
Breaking the rules would put companies at risk of fines of up to 10 percent of their total global turnover, 20 percent for repeat offenders, and repeated failure could lead the commission to “open a market investigation and, if necessary, conduct behavioral or imposes structural measures”. remedies.”
We are also seeing the beginning of new avenues for competition between the tech giants. Meta said last week it would allow users to download apps through Facebook ads in Europe.
