The European Union (EU) passed a law to increase digital competition. The Digital Markets Act (DMA), created on Nov. 1st 2023, goes into final effect on Friday Mar. 7th at 3 pm Belgium time. The law creates restrictions that will affect giants classified as gatekeepers: Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, ByteDance (Tiktok), Meta and Microsoft. To be a gatekeeper the company has to make at least €7.5 billion in the last three years, an average of €75 billion market cap and 45 million users.

This act is one of many lawsuits and legislation across the world to hopefully shift to more competitive markets. It allows third-party services like app stores, the uninstalling of preinstalled apps, prevents tracking outside of the gatekeepers platform for advertising purposes, not allowing favorable ranking of services on the gatekeepers platform and more restrictions and regulations.

The fine for breaking the DMA while doing business within the EU is a fine of up to 10% of the company’s worldwide turnover for the first offense. Google officially complied with the DMA on Wednesday. Apple has already been fined €1.8 billion and foreshadows that the EU will enforce the DMA.The DMA will affect the US sectors of the corporations.