With the Digital Markets Act, which is due to come into force in January 2023, Europe will impose new rules on digital giants, promoting compatibility and freedom and prohibiting anti-competitive practices.

With the Digital Markets Act, which is due to come into force in January 2023, Europe will impose new rules on digital giants, promoting compatibility and freedom and prohibiting anti-competitive practices.

This is a revealing episode of the growing distrust of consumers vis-à-vis the major digital groups, often referred to by the acronym GAFAM – for Google (Alphabet), Apple, Facebook (Meta), Amazon and Microsoft. In January 2021, WhatsApp, the instant messaging application of Meta (ex-Facebook) lost several tens of millions of users in a few days after announcing its intention to share certain user data with the social network Facebook. This great migration had then benefited competing applications, smaller in size, such as Threema, Signal or Telegram. Problem, at the time, users who had resolved to leave WhatsApp had to leave behind them the history of their communications and the list of their contacts. In other words, they had to start from scratch.

DMA: the interoperability of digital services

A painful experience that Digital Markets Act (DMA) promises to relegate to the dustbin of digital history. Because with this future European directive, which should normally come into force in January 2023, consumers will have the choice of sending messages, making calls or sharing files from one instant messaging service to another. In technical language, this is called interoperability. And, in the context of DMA, this compatibility should eventually concern not only instant messaging applications but also social networks.

The establishment of interoperability between digital services is one of the structuring rules of this new European directive (a very distant heir to the e-commerce directive 2000). This text, on which the Parliament, the Council and the European Commission have found a deal on March 24, 2022, clearly targets (and this is a first at this level in Europe) the major digital groups with a stated objective: to fight against anti-competitive practices, to prevent these companies from favoring their own services to the detriment of others market players (as Google has in the past been accused of doing with Google Shopping), and fostering innovation.

DMA: the digital giants under surveillance

These companies, in DMA parlance, are the major digital groups, Americans for the most part, but not exclusively. Entities with an annual turnover of more than 7.5 billion dollars, a market capitalization of more than 75 billion dollars and a minimum of 45 million active users per month within the European Union ( EU). Clearly, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft but also the Chinese TikTok. In European legal parlance, these companies are “access controllers”, because their size is so large in some markets that it is almost impossible to do nothing without them. The scope of intervention of the new European legislation concerns the vast majority of digital services, namely search engines, social networks, online video sharing platforms, operating systems, online storage, cloud computing, virtual assistants, web browsers, online advertising, app stores, and even connected TVs.

DMA: explicit consent and freedom of choice

In addition to interoperability, the Digital Markets Act also intends to impose an obligation to “explicit consent” to display targeted advertisements: a provision that echoes certain aspects of the GDPR (the General Data Protection Regulation) and which is supposed to provide better protection of personal data for advertising profiling purposes. Unfortunately, we have already seen that in this area, good theoretical intentions were sometimes far removed from practical results.

DMA also aims to give users and consumers greater freedom of choice by allowing them to select their web browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, Vivaldi, etc.), their search engine (Chrome, Bing, Qwant, DuckDuckGo, etc.) or even their personal voice assistant (Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri, etc.) and by offering them the possibility of using alternative platforms to digital heavyweights. Concretely, this means, for example, that when purchasing a device (computer, smartphone, tablet, etc.) “multiple choice screen” will appear at the time of the initial configuration so that we can opt for our favorite services (instead of having others imposed by default) and so that we can also, if necessary, delete the pre-installed applications . Likewise, within the framework of interoperability, it will soon be possible to ask to move data from one service to another for free (messaging, storage, etc.).

DMA: heavy penalties for violations

It should be noted that in the event of non-compliance with the measures set out in the DMA, the sanctions announced are heavy and dissuasive, since the fines could amount to up to 10% of the group’s worldwide annual turnover (for the previous fiscal year). concerned and up to 20% in the event of a repeat offence. With even a possible ban on buying other companies over a given period. For the European Commissioner in charge of the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, faithful to his outspokenthe DMA aims to “bringing order to the digital wild west”. Particularly enthusiasticthe Secretary of State for Digital Cédric O, welcomed “the most important economic regulation of recent decades”. It must be said that the DMA (and its legislative cousin, the DSA – Digital Services Act – a text, still under negotiation, which aims to better regulate relations between digital platforms and consumers) was one of the priorities of the French presidency of the European Union which ends on June 30, 2022.

On the side of the large digital groups, starting with the GAFAM, the reactions are on the other hand much more… measured. If Meta and Amazon (which we guess they think no less) do not communicate on the subject for the moment, Apple has expressed its concern regarding “some provisions may create unnecessary privacy and security vulnerabilities for our users, while others will prohibit us from charging for intellectual property in which we invest heavily”, indicates the American group whose AppStore has long been in the crosshairs of the European authorities. As for Google, if it expresses its willingness to cooperate, the group expresses its worry in the following terms: “While we support many of the DMA’s ambitions on consumer choice and interoperability, we remain concerned about the potential risks to innovation and the variety of choices offered to Europeans”.

It is easy to imagine that the digital giants will look for ways to circumvent this new regulation which goes against their interests and their economic models. And which is likely to have a significant impact on their turnover. Especially since another text, the Digital Services Act (DSA), is also in preparation, to regulate digital services…

DMA: everything that will change for users

One thing is certain: AMD will profoundly change our lives and our digital practices. Here is a non-exhaustive list of what will change for users.

• The choice of default applications. Users must be able to freely choose their web browser, search engine and virtual assistant on all devices. These three categories of applications will no longer be imposed by default by the operating system. More generally, the other applications installed by default – called “native” should be able to be deleted by users.
• The choice of application sources. Users will need to be able to download and install apps in a variety of ways, not just through the store linked to their device’s operating system (Apple’s App Store, Google’s Play Store, etc.). Clearly, we can retrieve applications everywhere, on alternative stores as well as on websites. It’s the end of the App Store’s enforced exclusivity for iPhone and iPad users.
• More varied payment systems. In addition, application developers will no longer be forced to go through imposed payment systems to be referenced in official stores (App Store, Play Store). Users will be able to choose how to pay for their applications.
• Messaging interoperability. Whatever the application used (WhatsApp, Messenger, Signal, etc.), we can send text messages, share files, photos and videos and make audio-video calls from one messenger to another. However, this measure will not be immediately applicable, due to technical issues (encoding of video calls, for example). The publishers concerned will have a period of two to four years to settle these points and ensure equivalent quality.
• Less limited commercial offers. The digital giants will no longer be able to prohibit their partners from offering more advantageous commercial offers outside their platforms, which should promote competition and make prices more attractive.
• Less focused research. Digital giants will no longer be able to promote their services or products by placing them at the top of their search engine results list to influence consumer choice.
• Unrestricted contactless functions. Third-party developers will need to be able to freely access certain auxiliary functions and components of digital devices, in particular the NFC chip of smartphones and connected watches, which will allow them to integrate new services into their applications.