2024-03-26 22:02:08
The European Union has passed landmark competition legislation aimed at reining in giant American technology companies.
Under the Digital Markets Act, the EU can crack down on anti-competitive practices by big tech companies, forcing them to open up their services in areas where their control restricts users’ choices and hinders the growth of small businesses. Six companies have been placed under surveillance: American technology giants “Alphabet”, “Amazon”, “Apple”, “Meta”, “Microsoft”, and “Chinese ByteDance”.
Through the Digital Markets Act, the Commission intends to act faster and stronger to address cases of abuse of a dominant position, thanks to pre-defined obligations and prohibitions.
It will also consider Apple’s new pricing system that may violate its commitment to allow applications from alternative stores to be uploaded to its App Store.
The new rules provide for fines of up to 20 percent of global trading volume in the case of serious and repeated violations (compared to 10 percent so far).
Also, the European Commission has given itself the ability to dissolve violating companies, which is a deterrent weapon that can be used as a last resort.
In order to comply with the law, which aims to open up the most widely used technology platforms and impose greater choice on users, major technology companies have come up with a set of major technical changes that they say will meet the new rules. It is now up to European regulators to scrutinize it and force companies to implement further changes, if necessary.
It is difficult to overstate the magnitude of this task. Previous cases took years to resolve.
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