Big tech companies reel from EU rules

The biggest tech companies in the world will undergo significant change in 2024 as they comply with EU regulations that take effect next month and will drastically alter how Europeans use widely used platforms like Instagram and Google.

Long ago, the European Union focused on big tech to control companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft that dominated the world market.

The Digital Markets Act (DMA), a historic law, sets a new precedent by attempting to stop businesses from growing strong enough to overtake competitors, as opposed to responding to the market after the fact.

“This is really a big, big intervention in markets that affect people’s lives every day,” said Fiona Scott Morton, senior fellow at think tank Bruegel.

Brussels in September named six so-called “gatekeepers” that face tougher curbs: Google’s Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, TikTok parent ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft.

It singles out 22 “core” platform services by the big six, including Amazon Marketplace, Apple’s App Store, Facebook, Instagram and Google’s Chrome browser.

“The point of the law is to open up these platforms and make the interface widely accessible so that there can be competition,” Scott Morton said.

With a flurry of changes announced since the beginning of the year, the firms have until March 7 to comply, even as Apple, TikTok, and Meta pursue challenges to various aspects of the law.

“We’ll get some of the benefits of the opening up of these markets pretty quickly,” Scott Morton predicted.

Wind of change

The announcement made by Apple in January that it would permit third-party app stores on the iPhone for the first time was one of the largest announcements made thus far.

The company reluctantly complied, but it continues to vigorously argue in court that its app stores on all of its devices — including the iPhone — should be treated as a single entity.

Users in the European Union who use Google services, such as YouTube and Chrome, are being asked by banners whether they wish to maintain their links and permit data sharing.

Choice screens will be another significant change. In an effort to counter Google search’s hegemony, the EU wants businesses to make it simpler for users to select their default search engine or browser.

Google has promised to overhaul its results page, with a group of links to price comparison websites and remove some features such as Google Flights.