Companies such as Apple, Google and Amazon
could soon face fines of up to 20% of their worldwide turnover or even behavioral or structural remedies, when they violate rules laid out in the European Union's Digital Markets Act.
The Digital Markets Act defines rules for large online platforms, called gatekeepers. In particular, its rulesets defines what gatekeepers have to do and what they can't do any longer.
An organization is considered a gatekeeper if it has over 45 million active end users each month or 10,000 yearly active business users. Gatekeepers furthermore have an annual European Union turnover of over 7.5 billion Euro or more in the last three financial years, or an average market capitalisation to at least 75 billion Euro in the last financial year. They also need to provide the same core platform service in at least three Member states.
Core platform services mean any of the following according to the DMA: online intermediation services, online search engines, online social networking services, video-sharing platform services, number-independent interpersonal communication services, operating systems, web browsers, virtual assistants, cloud computing services, and online advertising services.
The list of prohibited activities addresses common anti-consumer and anti-competition practices of gatekeepers.
In particular, gatekeepers may no longer do the following:
