EU names Meta, Apple, Microsoft and others as 'gatekeepers'

Also Alphabet, Amazon and ByteDance

EU names Meta, Apple, Microsoft and others as 'gatekeepers'

The European Union has named six tech firms as 'gatekeepers' that must comply with the Digital Markets Act.

In the parlance of the Digital Markets Act, a gatekeeper is a firm "worth more than €75 billion [£63 billion], with at least €7.5 billion [£6.3 billion] annual sales and 45 million monthly users in the EU."

Just as importantly, they are companies with a "significant impact" on the internet market.

The six firms are Google owner Alphabet; Amazon; Apple; TikTok owner ByteDance; Meta; and Microsoft.

Samsung was also mooted as a potential gatekeeper back in July, but hasn't made the final list. It successfully argued that its internet browser didn't meet the gatekeeper threshold.

"In total, 22 core platform services provided by gatekeepers have been designated," the EU said. "The six gatekeepers will now have six months to ensure full compliance with the DMA obligations for each of their designated core platform services."

The services are:

Those 22 services are the ones the EU will regulate under the DMA. That means they will need to open themselves up for more competition: OS providers will need to allow users to remove pre-installed apps and change system defaults, for example.

The list of core services can still change. For example, Microsoft's Edge browser, Big search engine, and advertising service, as well as Apple iMessage, are not on the list, but the European Commission is opening an investigation to see if they should be.

The Commission has said the investigations will take "no more than five months." Apple could be forced to make iMessage interoperable with competing services if it is added to the core services list.

Thierry Breton, commissioner for the internal market, said, "With today's designation we are finally reining in the economic power of six gatekeepers, giving more choice to consumers and creating new opportunities for smaller innovative tech companies, thanks for instance to interoperability, sideloading, real-time data portability and fairness.

"It was high time that Europe sets the rules of the game upfront, to ensure digital markets are fair and open."

Unsurprisingly, Apple, Google and ByteDance have all put out statements criticising the decision to designate them as gatekeepers.

If gatekeepers fail to comply with the DMA rules, the EU could levy fines of up to 10% of total annual worldwide turnover, or 20% for repeat offenders.