The European Union (EU) approved this Thursday (24) new anti-monopoly rules that seek to change the business model of major digital platforms, such as Apple, Google, Meta and Amazon, with which they dominated the market for the last two decades.
“Agreement. An innovative and long-awaited text to ensure fair competition in digital markets,” the French EU presidency announced on its official Twitter account.
Community institutions have reached an agreement on the final text of the law on digital markets, which will come into force in 2023 and which regulates app stores, internet searches and restricts the use that internet giants make of personal data.
Starting next year, users should be able to remove apps that a company has installed by default on mobile devices, such as the Google Chrome browser on Android phones.
In addition, they will also have the option to install an application store different from the one offered by the device brand, so that, for example, Android users can buy from the Apple store and vice versa.
Internet giants will also not be able to promote their own products on search engines and will be forced to allow users to buy products directly from other companies’ websites.
With regard to personalized advertising, the main business of internet companies, users will also have to give their consent on how companies collect and cross-reference their personal data.
Likewise, regulations prohibit companies from combining the personal data they acquire from users through their multiple services, unless they have the express consent of the customers.
In addition, the messaging services of the big platforms will have to be compatible with smaller platforms, along with a whole series of obligations that companies with a market value of at least 75 billion euros will have to fulfill.
In case of non-compliance, the new law provides that Brussels can impose fines of up to 20% of its annual turnover and even the possibility of fragmenting the company.
“The Digital Markets Act puts an end to the growing dominance of big technology companies. From now on, the big tech companies must show that they also allow fair competition on the internet”, said the rapporteur of the legislation in the European Parliament, Andreas Schwab.
The European institutions are also negotiating a law on digital services that obliges platforms to be more transparent in the operation of the algorithms that determine the content that users see on the internet and to quickly eliminate illegal content when they discover its existence.
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