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[Alpha Biz=(Chicago) Reporter Kim Jisun] Six companies, including Apple, Google and Meta, will be subject to "special regulations" that will take effect next year to prevent abuse of superior market status in the European Union (EU) region.
Samsung Electronics, which was initially mentioned as one of the leading candidates, was the only one excluded from the final list.
The European Commission said on the 6th (local time) that it has confirmed six "Gatekeeper" companies, meaning large platform operators that will be subject to special regulations under the Digital Market Act (DMA), which will take effect next year.
The DMA is a bill that regulates platform operators of a certain size as gatekeepers to prevent abuse of market dominance by large platform operators, which serve as a kind of gateway between consumers and sellers.
The EU plans to apply stricter regulations on gatekeeper companies to block the practice of using their superior market dominance to raise entry barriers and hinder the fair competition environment.
The six companies are Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Bytedance, Meta and Microsoft (MS), and a total of 22 major services, including their SNS platform, app store and operating system (OS), are subject to regulations.
Companies designated as gatekeepers are strictly prohibited from "cross-using" users' personal information acquired through their services in other service businesses and must obtain user consent.
In the case of Google or Apple, apps that are previously only available in their app stores should be open to mutual download.
The companies will be given a kind of grace period to comply with the DMA for about six months from this day, and will be regulated in earnest from March next year.
Failure to comply can result in fines of up to 10% of total annual sales. If repeated violations are identified, penalties can be raised by up to 20%.
In addition, the EU predicted that if it is considered a "systematic infringements", the executive committee could impose tougher sanctions, such as forcing the company to sell part of its business sector.
AlphaBIZ 김지선(stockmk2020@alphabiz.co.kr)
