Europeans using Apple, Google and other major tech platforms woke to a new reality Thursday as a landmark law imposed tough new competition rules on the companies — changing European Union citizens’ experience with phones, apps, browsers and more.
The new EU regulations force sweeping changes on some of the world’s most widely used tech products, including Apple’s app store, Google search and messaging platforms, including Meta’s WhatsApp. And they mark a turning point in a global effort by regulators to bring tech giants to heel after years of allegations that the companies harmed competition and left consumers worse off.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
And they mark a turning point in a global effort by regulators to bring tech giants to heel after years of allegations that the companies harmed competition and left consumers worse off.
The industry-wide changes are linked to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a 2022 law requiring dominant online platforms to give users more choices and rivals more opportunities to compete.
“The new options we’re introducing to comply with the DMA necessarily mean we will not be able to protect users in the same way,” Apple wrote in a white paper it published last week ahead of Thursday’s compliance deadline.
If Apple’s decision is allowed to stand, it will mean tech giants can thwart competition and undermine the law just by pointing to a rival’s past efforts to call out anticompetitive behavior, said Tim Sweeney, Epic Games’ CEO.
The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), a trade group representing four of the six gatekeeper companies — Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta — told CNN that “regulators need to resist the urge to politicize the process” of reviewing the plans.
DMA enforcement “should be proportionate and unbiased, taking into account the significant differences between gatekeepers, as well as how these services work in reality,” said Daniel Friedlaender, senior vice president of CCIA and head of its Europe office.
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