Tech Giants Acknowledge EU’s “Gatekeeper” Status

In a notable development, seven prominent companies, namely Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta (owner of Facebook), Microsoft, Samsung, and ByteDance (owner of TikTok), have confirmed that they meet the European Union’s newly established “gatekeeper” criteria, subjecting them to stricter regulations. EU industry chief Thierry Breton made this announcement on Tuesday.

While Samsung and ByteDance unexpectedly expressed their compliance with the criteria, TikTok disputed its inclusion on the list. Additionally, Booking.com anticipates falling into the gatekeeper category in the coming year.

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which came into effect in November, designates companies with over 45 million monthly active users and a market capitalization of €75 billion ($82 billion) as gatekeepers providing core platform services.

Under this classification, these companies will be required to enable interoperability between their messaging apps and competitors’ platforms, granting users the ability to choose which apps to pre-install on their devices.

Furthermore, gatekeepers will be prohibited from favoring their own services over those of rivals and preventing users from uninstalling pre-installed software or apps. These two rules will significantly impact Google and Apple, among others.

Read more: Reuters