The European Union on Wednesday imposed additional rules on 6 technology giants, including Meta, Apple and Microsoft, to prevent them from abusing their dominant position in the digital market.
The Union’s executive body announced in a statement that it classified Alphabet, Amazon, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft as “gatekeepers” under the European bloc’s new digital services law.
It explained that the EU could appoint technology companies as “gatekeepers” if they “provide an important gateway between businesses and consumers regarding the platform’s core services.”
In other words, the gatekeepers are the digital giants such as search engines, social networks, and cloud services, which are impossible to avoid when using the Internet.
-Advertisement-
Following the Union’s regulation that entered into force last August, the new decision imposes additional obligations on technology companies to prevent them from applying “unfair conditions to companies and end users and to ensure the openness of important digital services.”
Under the decision, “companies now have 6 months to implement the list of obligations and restrictions” drawn up by the European Union Commission.
If companies fail to comply with the new rules, “the European Union could impose a penalty of up to 10 percent of their annual revenue, which could be doubled if they repeat the violation.”
At the same time, the European Commission is now examining the appeal of Microsoft and Apple, which have claimed that some of their services such as Bing, Edge, Microsoft Advertising as well as iMessage do not qualify as “gatekeepers”.
