It appears that Apple and Microsoft disagree with European Union regulators about a new law called the Digital Markets Act (DMA). They are arguing that their services, iMessage and Bing, shouldn’t be considered “gatekeepers” under this law, which would put new restrictions on how they do business.
This week, the European Commission is going to release a list of services that will be affected by the DMA. According to reports from the Financial Times, services that meet specific criteria, like having more than €7.5 billion in yearly revenue, a market value of over €75 billion, and at least 45 million users in the EU each month, will have to follow the DMA rules.
Apple says that iMessage doesn’t have enough users to be subject to these rules. On the other hand, Microsoft doesn’t agree that its Bing search engine only has a 3% market share, and putting more legal restrictions on it would hurt its competitiveness.
Starting this spring, the DMA forces gatekeepers, like Apple and Microsoft, to share data with their competitors, link to other services, and make their services work with rival apps. This is meant to create a more fair environment for businesses and to give EU customers more choices.