Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Other Platforms Must Comply With New EU Antitrust Law Starting Thursday
The European Commission imposed a fine of 1.8 billion euros on Apple, considering that it has abused its dominant position in the market
Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft must begin to comply as of Thursday with the European Union ‘s digital markets law, the new antitrust regulations with which Brussels wants to control the market power of the large platforms digital.
The European Commission concluded last September that all of them met the requirements, having more than 45 million active users and more than 10 thousand business clients per year, and gave them six months to adapt to the regulation.
Specifically, 22 of the services offered by these companies must comply, including the social networks Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn; the WhatsApp and Messenger messaging systems ; the YouTube video platform; the Google Search search engine, and the Chrome and Safari browsers.
Also the iOS, Android and Windows operating systems; Google Maps and Google Shopping services; Amazon Marketplace, MetaMarketplace; the online advertising tools of Google, Amazon and Meta, and the mobile application stores of Apple (App Store) and Google (Google Play).
Mobile app stores
One of the big changes introduced by the regulation is related to mobile application stores, since Apple and Google will have to allow their customers to download apps through the competition and will also have to allow other companies to contact them. with your customers to offer them more advantageous offers.
Precisely on the subject, last Monday the European Commission imposed a fine of 1.8 billion euros on Apple, considering that for a decade it has abused its dominant position in the market to prevent streaming music services , like Spotify, will inform their customers of cheaper subscriptions.
The digital markets law also obliges large platforms to inform users about the possibility of downloading competing mobile applications, other than those that are pre-installed on mobile devices.
Other obligations
Among other measures, companies will also not be able to favor their own products in their search engines and the messaging services of large platforms will have to be compatible with those of smaller companies.
In addition, the rule prohibits them from combining the personal data that companies acquire through their multiple services (for example, Meta will not be able to cross-reference information between Facebook and WhatsApp).
Given these obligations, Apple has already updated its operating system so that users can download mobile applications from alternative stores, although in this case, it will force app developers to pay a fee of 50 euro cents for each user who installs an app. program, as long as a million people have already done it.
Google has also announced that it will allow its customers to decide what data it can combine between its Google Chrome, Google Maps and Android operating system services.
Along the same lines, Meta has also reported that it will allow users to unlink their Instagram and Facebook accounts in case they do not want the company to cross their data between both social networks.