New law in Europe must limit the power of large tech companies
The highly anticipated Digital Markets Act (DMA) will officially come into effect today. With this law, the European Union wants to limit the dominant position of large tech companies in Europe. The DMA affects tech giants with at least 45 million monthly active users in Europe.
What is the Digital Markets Act?
The DMA must curb the power of tech giants. Companies such as Meta, Apple, Amazon and Google have to make certain adjustments in Europe that mainly affect chat apps. For example, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) makes it mandatory that consumers must be able to send a message with WhatsApp to a user on iMessage. And so a message sent via iMessage must also reach Telegram. For most closed platforms, this will be a considerable technical challenge to integrate the different systems with each other. With this part of the DMA, the European Union wants to ensure that smaller players have the opportunity to reach a larger audience with their messaging app.
These are the seven consequences of the DMA for tech companies and for European consumers in short:
- Messaging services work as one
- Pre-installed apps should be able to be uninstalled
- Third party application stores should be allowed
- Sharing data between services within one company is only allowed with the explicit consent of users
- Application stores should no longer require app developers to use certain services
Just a little patience
The new law has been approved in Europe but the first effects will not be noticeable for the tech giants until next year. It is also not yet known which companies will fall under the DMA. The European Commission will make a decision on this by 6 September 2023 at the latest. By the end of 2023, the strict EU rules will have to be complied with by the selected companies. If they do not do this, they will face monster fines that can amount to 10 percent of their worldwide turnover.
You will find a detailed explanation of all the consequences of the DMA in this article. You may also be affected by the Digital Markets Act. You can read exactly what that would be here. The European Parliament has also approved a new law that makes the sharing of personal data in the European Union stricter. This law is called the Data Governance Act (DGA) and is intended to protect the privacy of citizens in EU countries in three ways.
What do you think of the consequences of the Digital Markets Act? Do you think this will change the tech industry for the better or do you see even more positive or negative consequences for consumers? Let us know in the comments below this article.
