The EU wants to contain Big Tech – it might be winning
How recent decisions show the bright side of EU regulation
The EU has had a long running tug of war with the world’s biggest tech companies. For a while, the EU had the upper hand, as the European Commission brought a series of competition, tax and data privacy cases against the Googles and Apples of the world. At a time when few governments wanted to openly go against the global mega-stars of business, the EU was teeing up big fines and impressive headlines.
Then the narrative seemed to swing the other way as court cases dragged on and appeals of initial judgments went against the European Commission and in favour of the tech giants. More philosophically, there was a feeling that the EU was falling behind on the reality of the problem, with an excessive focus on antitrust rules and not enough on how these tech companies were actually behaving or their impact on society.
Yet now it seems like the fight may be shifting back in Brussels’ favour. With the EU’s Digital Markets Act now in force, companies are being required to make significant changes, striking at the heart of some of big tech’s worst instincts.
Recent examples include:
· When Apple was forced to ditch its proprietary connector in favour of the interoperable USB-C
· Also allowing sideloading of apps (downloading from outside the Apple store) onto iOS
· Microsoft needing to stop providing its own web browser as the default for certain applications
· Plus Microsoft having to allow all programmes on Windows to be uninstalled if the user wants to
· And ‘feed’ style social media (like Twitter or Instagram) now being required to offer users an option that doesn’t rely on collecting their personal data
What these decisions have in common is that they have broadly moved away from competition as an issue of one company against another (although this clearly is still present) and are more focused on competition from the perspective of the consumer.
Does getting a particular kind of phone limit the other hardware I can buy? Will my device let me install programmes from outside the sanctioned ecosystem? Am I being herded towards a default option that is inferior to other possibilities? These questions, prompted now by years of major tech firms trying to lock in their consumers, are taking on a new primacy over the more classic approach of investigating whether a tax break was an unfair advantage to a particular company.
While at the legislative level, much of this has been enabled by new law that has only come into force very recently, this legislation has only come to pass because of an important shift in perspective.
It’s a shift that is revealed in the way we all now quite casually know to refer to companies like Google or Amazon as ‘platforms’. It’s a change of terminology that underlines the fundamental shift that has occurred in our societies as the digital revolution has taken hold. These tech giants are not simply making a phone, designing the operating system of a computer, allowing to search for web pages or providing a venue to buy various goods, they’re doing multiple or even all of these things at once. These companies are ‘platforms’ because they give us access to many different kinds of services. To an extent, they provide the infrastructure for us to operate important parts of our lives. The EU’s own term of ‘gatekeepers’ also conveys the essential role that these companies now play.
If the EU is now coming out, week after week, with announcements on how these tech companies need to change in order to comply with the law, it’s because EU legislators recognised this shift and were swift to act on it.
So far we have seen decisions that have helped to secure a future that is, yes, digital and connected, but also open and free. Against inevitable resistance from big tech (the court cases are already piling in), the EU must persevere and the rest of the world should see this for what it is: a model to be copied.