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Get in line or face the consequences—that’s the warning from the EU to Apple, Google, and Meta.
The union is investigating the tech behemoths under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which became actionable on March 7.
According to a statement accompanying the March 25 announcement of the investigation from EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, the companies may be dodging the act’s regulations.
“We suspect that the suggested solutions put forward by the three companies do not fully comply with the DMA,” Vestager said.
Regulators will look “into Alphabet’s rules on steering in Google Play and self-preferencing on Google Search, Apple’s rules on steering in the App Store and the choice screen for Safari and Meta’s ‘pay or consent model,’” the EU said, as well as looking into Amazon “preferencing its own brand products on the Amazon Store” and “Apple’s new fee structure.”
Spokespersons from Apple, Meta, and Alphabet told CNBC that they believed their products and companies are in compliance with DMA regulations.
“We have engaged with the European Commission, stakeholders and third parties in dozens of events over the past year to receive and respond to feedback, and to balance conflicting needs within the ecosystem,” Alphabet Director of Competition Oliver Bethell said in a statement. “We will continue to defend our approach in the coming months.”
DMA regulations are just the latest EU moves to manage the tech industry. As IT Brew reported last month, the bloc passed an AI regulatory framework that will attempt to protect “fundamental rights, democracy, the rule of law and environmental sustainability from high-risk AI, while boosting innovation and establishing Europe as a leader in the field” by restricting how the technology is deployed with an emphasis on privacy and civil rights.