The commissioning of the Digital Markets Law It aims to put an end to some abusive practices of large technology companies. Although companies are required to comply with the rules, some would be looking for a way out to shield some of their services. Such is the case of Apple and Microsoftwho argue that these are not popular enough to be subject to regulation.
A report of Financial Times hints that Microsoft does not want Bing to be considered as gatekeeper (guardian of access). In accordance with the Digital Markets Law, this denomination applies to companies that have a capitalization of more than 75,000 million euros, provide a basic web service and have a monthly traffic of 45,000 million active users.
Although the list of services considered as gatekeepers has not been published Microsoft tries to convince the European Union to leave Bing out. The technology company argues that the search engine has only 3% of the market share, so forcing it to comply with the rules would harm its position against Google.
The law, among other things, forces technology companies to make their services interoperable with those of the competition and requires that they share your data with small businesses. In order to encourage competition, the bigtech they will not be able to prioritize their services over lesser competitors or prevent users from uninstalling a default app or program.
According to the latest numbers from Bing, Microsoft’s search engine barely reached 100 million active users per day in March. Despite the implementation of ChatGPT, the figures have not changed much and Google continues as the rival to beat. Bing and Edge have gained ground in recent months, though not enough to be considered as gatekeepers.
Apple believes that iMessage is not popular, so it is not subject to the Digital Markets Act
In case of Manzana It’s similar to Microsoft. The Cupertino company I would be doing everything possible to shield iMessage, since it reaches the threshold of active users per month. Although the messaging application is installed by default on the iPhone, its popularity is far from the numbers that WhatsApp manages.
If Messages is labeled under the same name as the most popular messaging clients, that means that should be made interoperable with them. The possibility of sending messages between different platforms is a constant request of thousands of users, however, Apple keeps its ecosystem sealed. Its features are exclusive to the iPhone and other company devices, so only the Digital Markets Law could change this decision.
A few weeks ago, Google advertisement Messages for Android will integrate MSL (Messaging Layer Security), a security layer for end-to-end message encryption proposed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IEFT). The implementation of MLS is key to interoperability in messaging services, as the standard would address security and privacy concerns.
“Google strongly supports regulatory efforts that require interoperability for large messaging platforms from one end to another,” the company mentions in a post on your security blog.
The European Union would designate as gatekeepers to the Google search engine, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Windows and various Amazon and Meta services. In the case of Bing or iMessage, Apple and Microsoft would still have a chance. The European Commission could initiate an investigation to determine if they are subject to the obligations of the Digital Markets Law.
