How will new EU rules affect tech giants like Apple, Meta, Amazon? Explained

After the commission’s announcement today, the listed companies will have six months in order to align their services with the new rules or take legal recourse against the designation as ‘gatekeepers’.

EU has been working on building tougher regulation of big tech in order to protect European users online and encourage competition in US giants dominated industry. 

EU industry commissioner Thierry Breton has said that the organization is discussing compliance with the companies but noted that “if the solutions they propose are not good enough, we will not hesitate to take strong action”.

According to AFP, EU had named seven companies who had self-declared revenue and user figures to be declared as ‘gatekeepers’. These companies include Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, TikTok owner ByteDance, Facebook owner Meta, Microsoft and Samsung. 

The ‘gatekeeper’ status is applicable when a service has over 45 million monthly active users and over 10,000 yearly active business users in the EU. 

How will tech companies like Apple, Google be affected under the new rules? 

The DMA will make it illegal for companies to favour their own services over those of their competitors. For example, Microsoft has already announced that it will respect users’ choice of default browser.

In addition, companies will not be allowed to combine personal data across their different services or use data collected by third parties to compete with them. Companies will also have to allow users to download applications from competing platforms.

Another aim of the DMA is to prevent large companies from stifling the progress of their smaller rivals by getting rid of them through acquisitions. Under the new rules, all acquisitions, regardless of size, will have to be notified to the Commission.

(With inputs from AFP, Bloomberg)

Updated: 06 Sep 2023, 09:35 AM IST