EU to investigate Apple, Google, Meta under new digital law
Al Jazeera
Antitrust regulators will probe the Big Tech companies for potential breaches of the Digital Markets Act.
European Union regulators have opened investigations into Apple, Alphabet’s Google and Meta, in the first cases under a sweeping digital law designed to stop Big Tech companies from cornering digital markets.
The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive, said on Monday that it was investigating the companies for “non-compliance” with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which took effect on March 7.
The law requires six gatekeepers – which provide services such as search engines, social networks and chat apps used by other businesses – to comply with guidance to ensure a level playing field for their rivals and to give users more choices.
Violations could result in fines of as much as 10 percent of the companies’ global annual turnover.
The rules have the broad but vague goal of making digital markets “fairer” and “more contestable” by breaking up closed tech ecosystems that lock consumers into a single company’s products or services.
