The Verge - Experts fear the DMA won’t change the status quo

OMI Europe director Max von Thun was quoted saying that Big Tech companies like Amazon, Meta, and Google use cosmetic changes to circumvent Europe’s Digital Markets Act.

Big Tech’s strategy towards the DMA is to introduce changes that appear to open up their walled gardens, but that are actually unworkable or unappealing to businesses and users,

The European Union is attempting to loosen the grip that companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Google have over the digital economy. Tech giants targeted by the Digital Markets Act (DMA) — a law passed in 2022 aiming to make the tech industry less monopolistic — are required to remove unfair competitive advantages that have let them dominate their respective markets by March 6th. 

But some experts believe the status quo is unlikely to shift. Many of these companies have announced compliance plans in response to the DMA, and for the most part, these changes — as one might expect from a plan crafted by the company itself —  are unlikely to result in a loss of power. And then there’s Apple, which appears to be engaging in outright malicious compliance, leaving European developers at a disadvantage.

Last September, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, ByteDance, and Microsoft were designated as “gatekeepers” under the regulation — a term the DMA applies to tech giants providing core platform services that hold considerable market power. These services include search engines like Google Search, messaging services like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, and operating systems like Android, Windows, and iOS.

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