The European Commission yesterday designated 22 services of six major tech companies as “gatekeepers” of online services providing messaging to video sharing in its latest crackdown on Big Tech.
The firms are Alphabet Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc, Meta Plaftforms Inc, Microsoft Corp and TikTok owner ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動).
Under the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which came into force in November last year, companies with more than 45 million monthly active users and a market capitalization of 75 billion euros (US$80.6 billion) are considered gatekeepers providing a core platform service.
Photo: AP
Businesses labeled as such are required to make their messaging apps interoperate with rivals and let users decide which apps to preinstall on their devices.
Alphabet’s Google had the highest number of services, including Android operating system, Maps and Search, which would face tougher rules. Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, Marketplace and WhatsApp also qualified as gatekeepers.
The companies will have six months to demonstrate their compliance with their obligations and can be fined up to 10 percent of their annual global turnover for DMA violations.
“It’s D-Day for #DMA!,” EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton said on social media platform X. “The most impactful online companies will now have to play by our EU rules.”
A Microsoft spokesperson said it accepts its gatekeeper designation, while Meta, Google and Amazon spokespersons said that they were reviewing the designations.
Apple and TikTok were less welcoming.
TikTok said it “fundamentally disagree with this decision,” and is “disappointed that no market investigation was conducted prior to this decision and are evaluating our next steps.”
An Apple spokesperson said the company remained “very concerned about the privacy and data security risks the DMA poses for our users.”
The iPhone maker had earlier raised concerns that the DMA would lead to more installing of apps that do not come via Apple’s App Store, or “side-loading.”
“The commission should balance the need to protect user security and privacy with the very real risk that gatekeeper app stores will use security and privacy as excuses to dilute compliance with their DMA obligations,” said Stavroula Vryna, partner at law firm Clifford Chance.
Alphabet’s Gmail, Microsoft’s Outlook and Samsung Electronics Co’s browser were exempted after the companies provided sufficiently justified arguments showing that these services do not qualify as gatekeepers, the commission said.
The commission has also opened four market investigations to further assess Microsoft’s and Apple’s submissions that some of their core platforms such as Bing, Edge and Microsoft Advertising, and Apple’s iMessage services do not qualify as gateways.
“iMessage is designed and marketed for personal consumer communications, and we look forward to explaining to the commission why iMessage is outside the scope of the DMA,” an Apple spokesperson said.
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