Amazon, Google, Facebook and more: the EU officially names the gatekeepers of the digital economy

The move is part of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a pioneering law that adapts long-standing principles of competition policy to the new reality of the 21st century, where a few corporations have amassed enormous influence over the free market, often to the detriment of small businesses and daily users.

Five American companies – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft – and one Chinese – ByteDance – have initially been categorised as gatekeepers. They will now face legal obligations to change the way their popular services, such as messaging, social media, video-sharing and Internet browsers, are offered online.

The companies are considered gatekeepers because they meet certain quantitative criteria: an annual turnover of at least €7.5 billion in the European market or a market capitalisation of at least €75 billion, and more than 45 million monthly users and 10,000 yearly business users across the EU territory.

This economic might has granted them an “entrenched and durable” position of dominance in the digital economy, the European Commission says, and requires a new set of stringent rules that can rein their power excesses, ensure free choice for citizens, bring down obstacles for competitors and create greater accountability.

“It’s a very important milestone for freedom and innovation online in Europe,” said Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for the internal market, promising strong enforcement. “No online platform can behave as if it was too big to care.”

Gatekeepers will be banned from ranking their own products or services in a more favourable manner, a long-running point of contention between Big Tech and SMEs.

They will also have to allow users to easily remove apps pre-installed in devices and install third-party apps that provide an equivalent service.

Similarly, platforms will have to ask users for their explicit permission before combining the personal data obtained from different services, such as Instagram and Facebook, both of which are operated by Meta, before producing targeted advertising.

The obligations will take full effect in six months, a period during which the gatekeepers will have to inform the European Commission of how they intend to abide by the law.

In case of non-compliance, the executive can impose fines of up to 10% of the company’s worldwide turnover, which can double if the wrongdoing persists. Brussels could also impose remedial measures such as forcing a corporation to sell a part of its business.

From Google Maps to TikTok

As a starting point, the services subject to the rules will be:

• Alphabet: Android, Google Search, Chrome, Google Maps, Google Play, Google Shopping, Google Ads and YouTube.
• Amazon: Amazon Marketplace, Amazon Ads.
• Apple: App Store, Safari, iOS.
• ByteDance: TikTok.
• Meta: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Meta Marketplace, Meta Ads.
• Microsoft: LinkedIn, Windows PC OS.

The list is open and companies can be added or removed over time.

The European Commission is looking into whether four additional services – Microsoft’s Bing, Edge and Advertising, and Apple’s iMessage – should be qualified as “core platform services” and therefore made liable to the new rules.

Notably, two well-known, widely-used email providers – Alphabet’s Gmail and Microsoft’s Outlook – were removed from the initial selection after the parent companies successfully argued against the designation. 

Samsung, the South Korean tech giant, was equally excluded, despite the company having previously notified the Commission of its potential of being a gatekeeper.

X, formerly known as Twitter, was also spared.

Adopted in September 2022, the DMA marks a new chapter in the EU’s competition policy. With the law, Brussels turns around its traditional philosophy: instead of focusing on protracted legal cases against malpractices that have been going on for years, the DMA introduces ex-ante rules to prevent the offense from arising in the first place.

Unlike the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), whose enforcement relies on national authorities and often leads to diverging results, the implementation of the DMA will be centralised in a special unit inside the European Commission that will gather 80 staff members by 2024, including legal experts, data scientists and policy officers.

Given its ground-breaking nature, the legislation is expected to resonate beyond the bloc’s borders and have a spill-over effect in other countries that share the same concerns about the excessive, unchecked market power wielded by Big Tech.

This article has been updated with more information about the DMA.