Seven tech giants have informed the European Union that its rebooted antitrust regime — the Digital Markets Act (DMA) — will apply to them.
The initial seven, the majority of whom are US-based giants, are: Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, ByteDance (TikTok), Meta (Facebook), Microsoft and Samsung.
The DMA takes an ex ante approach to antitrust enforcement on major platforms that act as intermediaries between other digital businesses and consumers. It does this by laying out an up-front set of obligations and prohibitions which designated gatekeepers must abide by — with the threat of very large penalties (of up to 10% of global annual turnover) for non-compliance.
Examples of DMA ‘dos and don’ts’ that apply to gatekeepers include a ban on self preferencing and limits on how tech giants can use third party data, as well as a requirement to provide third parties with data their apps generate...
