who will give in the least to Europe while avoiding fines?

The new European regulation on digital technology, the Digital Markets Act, came into force this Thursday, March 7, 2024, with its twenty restrictions and prohibitions to promote competition and user protection. How are the six tech giants concerned responding to these new requirements in Europe?

This would be a new discipline to include in the Olympic Games program: complying with the new European digital regulations (DMA), while flirting with its limits to give up as little ground as possible, without losing its monopoly or its achievements. Apple, Alphabet – the parent company of Google – Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and ByteDance, the publisher of TikTok: these are the six “gatekeepers”, as the European Commission calls them. They manage 22 services, whether mobile application stores, Internet browsers or search engines.

And it is for Apple that this DMA revolution is the most difficult to swallow: Apple, which justifies and protects its ecosystem, closed for more than 15 years, on the theme of security and simplicity, summoned to accept that the Mobile applications can now come from stores other than the App Store.

In parentheses, this is the door open – in particular – to applications dedicated to pornographic content, always excluded by Apple, and which will rush into the sector to land on the iPhone. Technically, installing an application, via an alternative store, has been possible since the arrival of iOS 17.4 update, even if no store is yet concretely accessible. Since Tuesday March 5, you can also choose a default browser other than Safari, and a contactless payment system other than Apple Pay.

Collateral victims: hotels, restaurants, traders

For Google too, the arrival of DMA represents a challenge, even if the installation of applications without going through its Play Store has always existed, as the group from Mountain View (California) points out. Since 2018 and a procedure that cost it $5 billion, Google already allowed you to change your default search engine, even if until 2021, candidates had to pay to appear among the choices.

But the DMA does not only have beneficial effects: Google recognizes that the latest changes to its search engine impact the visibility of hotels, restaurants, merchants and airlines. In short, “small structures” of which some are already feeling the repercussions, to the benefit of the big platforms. However, this is exactly the opposite of the objective stated by Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market.

Regarding Meta, one of the challenges is the interoperability of WhatsApp and Messenger with third-party messaging services, while preserving end-to-end encryption. Concretely, “chats”, from one platform to another, are not yet possible: it must be said that Mark Zuckerberg has wasted time since November, disputing that his services are affected by the DMA.

Google potential default search engine… in Windows

For Microsoft, the changes mainly concern the place of Bing, its search engine, and Edge, its browser, in Windows. Google can now, for example, claim to become the Windows search engine on every PC. Finally, ByteDance, the only non-American giant among the six, continues to contest its status as gatekeeper, presenting itself as a challenger, and not as a heavyweight. The Chinese publisher of TikTok nevertheless already offers developers a tool to export user data to another application, with their consent.

So what are these developments worth? Do they meet the DMA? Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for Competition, said it again: “The tech giants must change their behavior”. In Brussels, we will now study these changes closely. In the event of a breach, each giant concerned risks a fine equivalent to 10% of its global turnover, 20% in the event of a repeat offense. Tens of billions of euros, potentially.