Antitrust regulators turn up heat on tech giants
Both Microsoft and Apple have come under scrutiny from the European Commission who is investigating tough new rules on digital markets. The Digital Markets Act, which came into force last November, is designed to make the digital marketplace more equitable and to ensure free and fair competition.
EU antitrust regulators opened an investigation this past September to assess whether Microsoft’s Bing and Apple’s iMessage services are not providing market overdominance, with regulators previously classifying them as core digital platform services, making them subject to the Digital Market Act’s tough new regulations. Both Microsoft and Apple have contested this classification, leading to the new inquiry.
The DMA insists that Big Tech allow for third-party apps on their platforms or online stores and to make it much easier for consumers to seamlessly switch from default apps to a rival one.
The EU Commission has sent out questionnaires to rival companies, asking about how Microsoft and Apple’s services under the spotlight affect those rival companies’ overall competitive place in the digital market. Respondents were given a tight one-week deadline to return the questionnaire as EU regulators want to wrap the investigation up by early spring next year.
