US Tech Giants Tagged 'Gatekeepers' Under the DMA

Five major US tech companies are "gatekeepers" subject to the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA), the European Commission said Wednesday. It designated 22 core platform services provided by Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft, saying the companies have six months to bring the platform services into compliance with the act. The services involved are social media, intermediation, ads, messaging, video-sharing, browsers, search and operating systems. Several platforms said they will work toward compliance. ByteDance criticized the decision.

A company is presumed to be a gatekeeper, the EC said, if it has a certain annual revenue in the European Economic Area and provides a platform service in at least three EU countries; offers a core platform service to more than 45 million monthly active end users established or located in the EU, and more than 10,000 yearly active business users established in the EU; and if it met the second criterion over the past three years.

The EC also launched four market investigations to further assess Microsoft's and Apple's claims that some of their core platform services shouldn't be deemed gateways (Microsoft's Bing, Edge and Microsoft Advertising and Apple's iMessage). The EC is also considering whether Apple's iPadOS should be designated as a gatekeeper despite not meeting the thresholds.

Companies must now comply with a set of do's and don'ts such as letting third parties interoperate with their services in certain situations, and not treating their own services and products more favorably in ranking than those of third-party offerings on the platform. Failure to comply could result in fines of up to 10% of a company's total worldwide revenue, rising to 20% if there are systematic infringements. The EC could also force a gatekeeper to sell a business or parts of it, or ban it from acquiring additional services related to the noncompliance.

Amazon will work with the EC to achieve compliance, a spokesperson emailed. The DMA will require Google to change the way its products and services work, Google Legal Director Oliver Bethell blogged: "For example, that will mean building on the work we have done to provide consumers with information and opportunities to switch platforms or manage their data."

TikTok "fundamentally disagrees with this decision," a spokesperson emailed. TikTok brought choice "to a space largely controlled by incumbents and this decision risks undermining the DMA's stated goal by protecting actual gatekeepers from newer competitors like TikTok. We are evaluating our next steps." Microsoft, Apple and Alphabet didn't comment.