Here are the first 7 potential “Gatekeepers” under the EU Digital Markets Act

These companies:<p>Alphabet Amazon Apple ByteDance Meta Microsoft Samsung<p>Requirements:<p>They will no longer be able to lock in users in their ecosystem.<p>They will no longer be able to decide which apps you need to have pre-installed on your devices; which app store you have to use.<p>They will not be able to “self-preference”: exploiting the advantage of being the gatekeeper by treating their own products and services more favorably.<p>Their messaging apps will have to interoperate with others.

For those who say Apple&#x2F;Google will make sideloading more difficult to reach&#x2F;enable:<p><i>&gt; 3. The gatekeeper shall ensure that the obligations of Articles 5, 6 and 7 are fully and effectively complied with.<p>&gt; 4. The gatekeeper shall not engage in any behaviour that undermines effective compliance with the obligations of Articles 5, 6 and 7 regardless of whether that behaviour is of a contractual, commercial or technical nature, or of any other nature, or consists in the use of behavioural techniques or interface design.<p>&gt; 6. The gatekeeper shall not degrade the conditions or quality of any of the core platform services provided to business users or end users who avail themselves of the rights or choices laid down in Articles 5, 6 and 7, or make the exercise of those rights or choices unduly difficult, including by offering choices to the end-user in a non-neutral manner, or by subverting end users’ or business users&#x27; autonomy, decision-making, or free choice via the structure, design, function or manner of operation of a user interface or a part thereof.<p>&gt; 7. Where the gatekeeper circumvents or attempts to circumvent any of the obligations in Article 5, 6, or 7 in a manner described in paragraphs 4, 5 and 6 of this Article, the Commission may open proceedings pursuant to Article 20 and adopt an implementing act referred to in Article 8(2) in order to specify the measures that the gatekeeper is to implement.</i>

The eu is basically doing the work that us antitrust hasn’t done for years. Nice.

The EU represents a vast market of (relatively) well-off and (relatively) informed consumers and businesses.<p>While famously keen on having social safety nets, its politics is generally center-right and the economy cannot be described as anything else than a market economy.<p>The unusual circumstances are that for a major and growing in importance sector (digital services) it is almost entirely relying on US companies for software and Asian companies for hardware.<p>The result is that the EU is forced to either accept the abysmal regulatory standards of these other regions or try to throw its weight around and hope for the best.<p>The positive end games are either US politicians growing up a spine and ensuring this vital sector is not strangled by oligopolies or the EU developing its own services (and fast).<p>Neither is very likely, so grab you pop corn...

Why do I doubt we will see inter-operable Whatsapp and iMessages in 7 months from now? Let alone a side-loadable iOS Appstore.

An official EU website popping up a cookie banner is some delicious irony.

I, for one, cannot wait to able to sideload (easily) on my iPhone and AppleTV. Downvote me, baby.

How likley is it for these companies to actually implement these changes? Are these enforcable?