EU hits 6 tech giants with extra obligations

BRUSSELS

The EU executive body on Wednesday imposed additional rules on six giant tech companies, including Meta, Apple, and Microsoft, to prevent them from abusing their dominant position in the digital market.

The European Commission announced in a statement that it has labeled Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft as so-called “gatekeepers” under the bloc’s new Digital Services Act.

The EU can designate tech companies as gatekeepers if they “provide an important gateway between businesses and consumers in relation to core platform services,” the statement explained.

In other words, gatekeepers are the digital giants, such as search engines, social networks, and cloud services that are basically impossible to avoid when using the internet.

Under the bloc’s regulation that entered into force in August, this status comes with additional obligations on the tech companies to prevent them from applying “unfair conditions on businesses and end users and at ensuring the openness of important digital services.”

The companies have now six months to implement the EU Commission’s list of obligations and restrictions.

If they fail to comply with the new rules, the EU can hit them with a penalty of up to 10% of their annual turnover, which can be doubled if they repeat the infringement.

Meanwhile, the EU Commission is now examining the appeal of Microsoft and Apple that argued that some of their services such as Bing, Edge, and Microsoft Advertising, as well as iMessage, do not qualify as gatekeepers.