The European Commission on Wednesday designated Google, Microsoft and Apple and three other technology companies as content intermediaries, giving them six months to comply with the new obligations in the EU, and opened investigations into the last two.
The information was released on the day the first list of content intermediaries was published under the new Digital Market Law (goalkeepers) in the EU, which are large technology companies that work connecting companies and users.
Included in the list of goalkeepers are Alphabet (a Google group), Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft, designating a total of 22 essential platform services provided by these gatekeepers, who will now have six months “to ensure full compliance with obligations.” of the Digital Market, informs the institution to the press.
At the same time, the community executive indicates that it “initiated four market investigations to further evaluate the accusations of Microsoft and Apple, according to which, despite reaching the thresholds, some of their base platform services cannot be considered gateways“, namely Bing, Edge and Microsoft Advertising (Microsoft) and iMessage (Apple).
“Nos da Lei dos Mercado Digital, these investigations have the objective of determining whether a sufficiently substantiated refutation presented by the companies demonstrates that the services in question should not be designated”, adds the institution, noting that this investigation must be concluded within a maximum period of five months.
In addition, the European Commission has launched a market investigation to determine whether Apple’s iPadOS should be designated as goalie“despite not reaching the thresholds”, in another investigation that will be carried out within 12 months, he points out without specifying.
Brussels adds that, although Gmail, Outlook and Samsung Internet Browser meet the thresholds established in the Digital Markets Law to be considered goalkeeperspresented “sufficiently substantiated arguments demonstrating that these services are not considered ‘gateways’ for the respective base platform services”, and therefore did not count on this designation.
“After their designation, access controllers now have six months to comply with the full list of obligations provided by law, offering more options and more freedom to end users and professionals of access controller services,” concludes the institution. .
This designation is intended for digital content intermediary platforms that have an annual turnover in the EU of at least 7.5 billion euros in the last three years or a market value of at least 75 billion euros, operate in at least three Member States and have more than 45 million monthly active end-users and more than 10,000 annual active business users for the last three years.
In force since last November, the Digital Markets Law stipulated rules on what technology companies with goalkeepers They are or are not authorized to do in the EU, a kind of blacklist with rules for these big platforms.
Therefore, the new Digital Markets Law will apply to goalkeeperscompanies that sometimes create barriers between businesses and consumers and control entire ecosystems made up of different platform services, such as online marketplaces, operating systems, online services, cloud or online search engines.
It is expected that if a content intermediary (goalie) infringes the rules established by the regulation, may be subject to a fine of up to 10% of the total worldwide turnover, a percentage that rises to 20% in case of repeat offence.
Source: TSF
