Apple, Alphabet and Meta are being investigated by the EU Commission for potential breaches of new laws dealing with anti-competitive behaviour.
Anti-competition laws have seen more attention in the past decade as the online landscapes are constantly growing and changing. We can thank government regulators for keeping big technology companies in check. The EU’s European Commission stated it will now begin its investigation on three big companies: Apple, Google’s parent company Alphabet and Meta. There have been rumours and signs pointing to potential breaches of the bloc’s new laws designed to police anti-competitive behaviour by big technology companies.
These three big names can face big fines if they are found breaching the Digital Markets Act (DMA). This was a new regulatory law set up on March 7 and was aimed at increasing choice for online consumers. “The commission suspects that the measures put in place by these gatekeepers fall short of effective compliance of their obligations under the DMA,” said the commission.
The European Commission stated that it is looking at potential breaches related to Apple and Google’s measures, allowing app developers to “steer” users to offers outside their app stores. This was related to other fines earlier this year, where the app stores were not open to installing apps and games at third-party sites.
The executive panel will also be looking at multiple other issues: whether Alphabet favours its own services like Google shopping in search results on its search engine; Meta’s decision to charge users for an ad-free experience on Facebook and Instagram and whether it complies with DMA provisions on users’ personal data; and whether Apple is making it easy for users to pick alternative browsers on their phones. The DMA requires the six major tech companies—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft and the TikTok owner ByteDance—to comply with the guidelines outlined in the Act.
All of these services have search engines, social networks and chat apps, but they still need to be regulated for their rivals and give users more choices. These big names are basically used by almost everyone on this planet, so it makes sense that they need some kind of regulation to promote competition and not hold a monopoly in the tech sector.
The commissioner for the internal market, Thierry Breton, said the companies faced the threat of “heavy fines” if they were found to have breached the act. The Guardian noted Breton’s statement on the matter: “We have been in discussions with gatekeepers for months to help them adapt, and we can already see changes happening on the market. But we are not convinced that the solutions by Alphabet, Apple and Meta respect their obligations for a fairer and more open digital space for European citizens and businesses.”
Even the competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, told reporters the companies had plenty of time to comply with the act, adding that the commission had worked with them to ensure they were compliant. She clearly said that this was not a “rushed” decision, and the point of the new laws was “not to have cases” but to give consumers choices they were entitled to under competition laws.
Vestager explained that the EU had put in place “strong deterrents” to encourage tech companies to take their obligations seriously, with hefty fines for those that failed to meet the standards required. Non-compliance with the DMA can result in fines of up to 10% of turnover, rising to 20% for repeated infringements. The annual revenue at Apple last year was $383 billion, while at Alphabet, it was $307 billion, and at Meta, it was $134 billion.
