When the proposal submitted by Europe’s antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, was endorsed by members of the European Union and EU legislators, it garnered widespread attention.
According to her proposal, based on the Digital Markets Act (DMA) law will be passed to limit the power of the tech giants. These rules will check the dominance of tech giants like Apple, Meta, Google, and Amazon by requiring them to collaborate and forfeit restrictive powers.
Digital Markets Act (DMA)
The Digital Markets Act ensures that fair and harmonized rules are established, precluding discriminatory practices by gatekeepers.
It also includes a market investigation-based enforcement mechanism. As digital technology evolves, the same apparatus will allow the regulation to remain up-to-date.
As far as digital policy is concerned, the Digital Markets Act is the most comprehensive.
To prevent the world’s largest technology platforms from squeezing out new competitors and enclosing their users, the legislation prevents them from using their interconnected services and significant resources for such purposes, creating opportunities for future industry players and nurturing a stronger competitive position.
“The Digital Markets Act puts an end to the ever-increasing dominance of Big Tech companies,” says lead MEP Andreas Schwab. “The new rules will help enforce that basic principle. The time of long antitrust cases is over, during which the authorities were lagging behind the big tech companies. Europe is thus ensuring more competition, more innovation, and more choice for users.”
Impact on tech giants
As a result of these DMA laws, tech giants are now pushing to open their services to other businesses, including their competitors.
For a competitive edge, Google will need to provide alternatives to its search engine, Maps app, and Chrome browser to people who own smartphones running the Android operating system.
On the other hand, Apple would be forced to relinquish control of the iPhone. From now on, iPhone users will be able to uninstall the Safari web browser and other corporate apps that they are presently unable to delete.
Laws governing messaging services dealt another blow to these behemoths.
Parliament was successful in persuading the Council of the importance of collaboration prerequisites for messaging services. WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and iMessage are among the service that would be affected.
These platforms must agree to open up and collaborate with smaller messaging services. This requirement will be phased in over four years for group chats.
Conclusion
However, questions remain about how this new law will be implemented, how it will work in practice, and how much impact it will have on social media and other corporate platforms.
People know that the tech giants and other businesses that will be affected by the new laws are going to try to find ways to lessen the damage through the courts.
Regulatory authorities will have to involve additional budgets to support their increasingly broad oversight responsibilities when budgets are already stretched due to the pandemic.
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