US Big Tech from Alphabet to Meta brace for EU’s antitrust Digital Markets Act

Big Tech is bracing for the European Union’s biggest-ever clampdown on anticompetitive practices in the digital economy, potentially provoking a new wave of legal battles between regulators and Silicon Valley.

By September 6, antitrust regulators will announce a list of services likely to include Alphabet’s Google Search, Apple’s App Store, Amazon.com’s marketplace and Meta Platforms’s Facebook, to be targeted by rules aimed at preventing the most powerful firms from wrecking new markets before it is too late to act.

The Digital Markets Act, or DMA, which takes effect early next year, will impose a rigid regime of dos and don’ts on firms that previously left regulators in their wake, despite multiple probes into practices that have resulted in billions of euros in fines and tax orders.

It will be illegal for certain platforms to favour their own services over those of rivals. They will be barred from combining personal data across their different services, prohibited from using data they collect from third-party merchants to compete against them, and will have to allow users to download apps from rival platforms.

But the groundwork has been laid for some firms to lock horns with the EU in the same courts that have heard challenges to years of ex-post – or after the fact – antitrust enforcement.

“There is likely to be litigation coming,” said Alexandre de Streel, academic director of the digital research programme at the Centre on Regulation in Europe, a think tank. “Defining the services to be covered hasn’t been as easy as had been expected.”