Europe Agrees New Law to Curb Big Tech Dominance
upstart writes:
Europe agrees new law to curb Big Tech dominance:
European lawmakers have agreed on new rules which they hope will curb the dominance of Big Tech companies.
Under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), giants such as Google and Apple will be forced to open up their services and platforms to other businesses.
[...] The announcement is the biggest regulatory move yet from the EU to act against what it defines as "anti-trust" or anti-competitive behaviour from mainly US technology businesses.
"The agreement ushers in a new era of tech regulation worldwide," said German MEP Andreas Schwab, who led the negotiations for the European Parliament.
[...] The targets of the law include WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, iMessage, the App Store, Google Play and many other services belonging to large tech firms.
The EU wants to give users more choice over how people send messages. The new rules would require that technology make their messaging services interoperable with smaller competitors.
However, Apple said it was "concerned that some provisions of the DMA will create unnecessary privacy and security vulnerabilities for our users".
Meanwhile, Google said: "While we support many of the DMA's ambitions around consumer choice and interoperability, we're worried that some of these rules could reduce innovation and the choice available to Europeans."
The law will only affect companies with a value of more than 75bn (63bn), annual sales of 7.5bn and at least 45 million monthly users.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.