Europe’s new platform rulebook is moving from theory to enforcement, and the companies in its sights are familiar ones. Seven tech giants, mainly from the United States, have notified the European Union about the relevance of its renewed antitrust law — the Digital Markets Act (DMA) — to them. The companies are Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, ByteDance (TikTok), Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, and Samsung.
That group matters because the DMA is not another broad statement of principle about online competition. It is a proactive approach to regulating major platforms that serve as intermediaries between other digital businesses and the end user. In plain terms, the law is aimed at the companies that control the routes through which people discover apps, buy products, search for information, communicate, advertise and reach customers.
For years, competition cases against large technology companies have often moved slowly: regulators investigate a practice, establish harm, litigate, and then seek a remedy. The DMA takes a different route. It sets conduct rules in advance for designated “gatekeepers,” on the assumption that the biggest platforms have the ability to shape markets before a smaller rival, developer or advertiser has much chance to respond.
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What gatekeeper status is designed to change
The Digital Markets Act ensures fairness in the digital landscape by imposing obligations and prohibitions on designated gatekeepers. Among the most consequential restrictions are rules against self-preferencing and limitations on how tech giants can use third-party data.
Self-preferencing is one of the central disputes in platform markets. A company that operates a marketplace, search engine, app store or advertising system can also offer its own competing products and services. That creates an obvious conflict: the platform can set the terms of access while competing against the businesses that rely on it. The DMA’s premise is that gatekeepers should not be able to use that position to give their own services an unfair advantage.
The rules around third-party data reach a similarly sensitive part of the digital economy. Platforms routinely see information generated by businesses that use their tools, stores, marketplaces or advertising products. That information can be commercially valuable. Limits on its use are intended to address the concern that a platform could learn from a third party’s activity and then turn that knowledge against the third party.
Additionally, gatekeepers must provide third parties with data their apps generate or face a hefty penalty of up to 10% of their global annual turnover. That requirement is significant because data access is often a practical question of bargaining power. A developer or business may be dependent on a platform but unable to obtain a clear view of how its own app, customers or activity are performing. The DMA seeks to make that dependency less one-sided.
For app distribution, the consequences could be especially visible to consumers and developers. Under the EU’s Digital Markets Act, app store gatekeepers will be unable to block the sideloading of applications, nor will they be able to require developers to use their own services, such as payment systems. Those rules challenge the idea that a major app store can dictate every layer of the transaction between a developer and a user.
That does not mean app stores suddenly stop mattering. They remain important discovery and distribution channels. But the DMA is intended to curb the ability of a gatekeeper to make access to those channels conditional on using its preferred commercial tools. For developers, the prospect is greater room to choose how they distribute software and handle payments. For users, the practical test will be whether those choices are presented clearly and safely rather than buried behind warnings or friction.
Advertising, consent and the limits of platform power
The DMA also prohibits any tracking of users for ads without their explicit consent. Advertising is the commercial engine behind many large digital services, and user tracking has long been one of the areas where platform scale produces the greatest advantage. A company with a large audience and multiple services can potentially build a far richer picture of user activity than a smaller competitor can.
By requiring explicit consent, the EU is hoping to create a more fair and equitable marketplace online, one which prevents the abuses of market power that tech giants have been engaging in for years. The language is ambitious, and its success will hinge on execution. Consent can be meaningful only if users understand what they are agreeing to and can refuse without being pushed into a worse version of a service. The DMA’s importance lies not just in the written prohibition, but in how regulators assess the choices companies put in front of people.
The European Commission has until September 6 to announce the official designation of gatekeepers this summer, potentially adding more names to the list. The formal designation process is the point at which a general regulation becomes a set of direct obligations for individual companies. It also explains why the notifications from Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, ByteDance (TikTok), Meta (Facebook), Microsoft and Samsung are only part of the story: the Commission makes the official call.
However, since the Digital Markets Act is aimed at only the most influential platforms, it is unlikely that the list will expand significantly. That narrow focus is deliberate. The DMA is not designed to regulate every online business or to treat scale itself as wrongdoing. It concentrates on platforms whose position as an intermediary can give them exceptional leverage over other businesses and end users.
All those designated as gatekeepers must ensure compliance with the DMA within 6 months of the announcement, by spring 2024. That window is short in the context of products that operate across app distribution, advertising, search, social media and digital commerce. Compliance will likely be more than a legal exercise. It can require changes to product design, commercial terms, technical interfaces and internal policies about data use.
If any of the seven companies designated by the European Commission as “gatekeepers” under the Digital Markets Act break any of the rules set out by the Commission, they could face enforcement action in the following year. The prospect of penalties of up to 10% of global annual turnover gives the law a scale that large companies cannot easily dismiss as a routine cost of doing business.
“We are also continuing our ongoing discussions with the Commission on the applicability of the regulation to our business.”
The DMA is only one part of Europe’s platform push
The Digital Services Act (DSA), the sister regulation of the Digital Markets Act, applies to a wider range of platforms than the DMA. The distinction is important. The DMA is about market power and the conduct of gatekeepers; the DSA is concerned with the responsibilities of online services, especially at scale. Together, they represent a broader European effort to make major digital platforms more accountable for the effects of their business models.
The European Commission published a list of 19 platforms that fall under the strictest provisions of the DSA in April. These provisions aim to ensure algorithmic accountability on very large online platforms (VLOPs) and search engines (VLOSEs). Algorithmic accountability is not an abstract concern when ranking, recommendation and moderation systems influence what users see, what creators can reach and what businesses can sell.
All but one of them — Samsung — are classified as Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) or Very Large Online Service Providers (VLOSEs). This indicates that the five major US tech companies, known as GAFAM, and China’s ByteDance will be subject to the toughest requirements under the European Union’s updated digital regulations.
Samsung’s presence alongside the better-known GAFAM names and ByteDance is a useful reminder that the EU’s scrutiny is not limited to one national market or one type of service. The common thread is platform influence. For the companies, the DMA and DSA create a more demanding environment in Europe. For smaller businesses and users, the promise is that the rules of access, choice, data and advertising will no longer be written solely by the platforms that dominate them.
