A new confrontation between the EU and American digital companies. The European Commission on Monday began proceedings against Apple, Alphabet (Google) and Meta (Facebook, Instagram) for alleged breaches of European competition rules, for the first time under the new Digital Markets Regulation (DMA).
Brussels has been in dialogue for months with the three US internet giants about their plan to comply with the rules, which came into force in early March. After years of fighting in vain over abuse of dominance due to insufficiently restraining legislation, the European executive is hoping to arm the DMA with a weapon powerful enough to force it to cave.
The new regulation provides for fines of up to 20% of global turnover in the event of a serious and repeated violation (compared to 10% previously).
Several open investigations
The Commission is therefore opening an investigation against Alphabet, which is suspected of using the quasi-monopoly of its Google search engine to benefit, thanks to better reference, its own price comparison services to the detriment of competitors when searching for hotels, plane tickets or other services. consumer products sold over the Internet. For this reason, Google was already fined 2.4 billion euros in 2017.
Alphabet and Apple are also subject to restrictions in their Google Play and App Store app stores. According to the Commission, both groups “restrict the ability of developers to freely communicate and promote their proposals and enter into contracts directly” with end users, “including by imposing different fees.”
Meta, the social media giant, has been the victim of a violation of a rule that requires the company to require user consent in order to be able to combine personal data from different services for advertising profiling purposes.
“We’re not convinced”
The European Executive hopes to complete these procedures within a maximum period of 12 months. “We are already seeing changes in the market. But we are not confident that the solutions proposed by Alphabet, Apple and Meta live up to their commitments,” said European Commissioner for Digital Technology Thierry Breton.
On Thursday, the US government also sued Apple for monopolistic practices over restrictions imposed by a California group on app developers. Brussels has opened another proceeding against Apple for allegedly violating its obligation to offer users the ability to easily uninstall stock apps on the iOS operating system found on its iconic iPhones.
Following the Commission’s decision, the technology lobby condemned the EU’s “hasty” approach.
Source: Le Parisien
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