The European Union is expected to reveal its landmark Digital Markets Act as soon as Thursday, in a bid to regulate competition between major tech firms in the country.
- The measure will provide guidelines on how major online firms should compete in the EU market, mandating them to provide consumers the choice between an application and a search platform when buying a new smartphone.
- Users will also be given the legal right to uninstall applications, with firms such as Apple and Google providing preinstalled applications in their devices without giving users a choice.
- Users will be given the capacity to use online services with greater restrictions on data handling, and messaging services will be mandated to interact with competing services from smaller platforms.
- The measure is likely to cover firms with at least €75-billion market capitalization that run a core online platform service, including a social network or web browser. They will also need to have at least 45,000 active users.
The latest standards cover major firms Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft.
AMZN is down 0.62%, AAPL by 0.62%, FB by 1.30%, and MSFT by 0.85% premarket.
Source: FT