Big Tech's core businesses face overhaul under EU tech rules

investing.com:

By Supantha Mukherjee and Martin Coulter

(Reuters) -The European Union has picked out 22 so-called «gatekeeper» services, run by six of the biggest tech companies in the world, to face new rules as part of its latest crackdown on Big Tech.

The wide-ranging Digital Markets Act (DMA) will apply to services from Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Meta, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and TikTok owner ByteDance.

Seen by many as a companion piece of legislation to the Digital Services Act (DSA), which imposes greater responsibilities on tech companies for the content shared on their sites, the DMA has been designed to level the playing field between Big Tech companies and smaller competitors.

The tech giants now have six months to comply with the provisions of the DMA, which aims to improve access and the compatability of services in Europe, and poses an unprecedented challenge to these companies' business models.

Under the DMA, companies with more than 45 million monthly active users and a market capitalisation of 75 billion euros ($82 billion) are considered gatekeepers providing a core platform service.

Businesses labelled as such will be required to make their messaging apps interoperate with rivals and let users decide which apps to pre-install on their devices.

Alphabet's Google had the highest number of services, including its Android operating system, Maps and Search, which would face tougher rules. Meta's Facebook (NASDAQ:META), Instagram, Marketplace, and WhatsApp also qualified as gatekeepers.

Companies that fail to comply with their obligations can be fined up to 10% of their annual global turnover for DMA violations.

Gatekeepers could ask for an interim measure to suspend the