EU to investigate Apple, Meta, and Google.
European Union (EU) has opened investigations against some of the largest tech companies globally due to anticompetitive practices.
Meta, Apple, and Alphabet, which owns Google, are being looked into for potential breaches of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) introduced in 2022. If they are found to have broken the rules, the firms can face huge fines of up to 10% of their annual turnover.
The companies may be hit with hefty fines equal to 10% of their yearly revenue if it is determined that they violated the regulations.
EU antitrust boss Margrethe Vestager and industry head Thierry Breton announced the investigations on Monday.
Just six companies have obligations under the DMA, but they are also the world’s largest tech firms: Alphabet, Apple, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and ByteDance.
Actually, none of the companies are based in Europe; instead, ByteDance is headquartered in Beijing, and five of the businesses are located in the US.
Just two weeks after turning in their painstakingly crafted compliance reports, three of them are now being questioned.
It happens three weeks after Apple was fined €1.8 billion (£1.5 billion) by the EU for violating competition laws regarding music streaming.
In a historic lawsuit brought last week against the tech giant, the US accused Apple of controlling the smartphone market.
The EU said it will investigate five different possible acts of non-compliance in its announcement:
1 & 2 – Whether Apple and Alphabet are not allowing apps to freely communicate with users and make contracts with them
3 – Whether Apple is not giving users enough choice
4 – Whether Meta is unfairly asking people to pay to avoid their data being used for adverts
5 – Whether Google preferences the firm’s own goods and services in search results
The first two of these investigations concern what is known as “anti-steering” – and the EU says it believes the firms are making it difficult for apps to tell users about ways to pay less for their services outside of using app stores’ own payment methods.
Source; BBC
