The European Commission’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a regulatory earthquake for the digital sphere. It aims to create a safe digital space for users and to ensure digital services and products are safe and that users’ rights protected, all while promoting competition and fairness in the rules for online platforms by tackling monopolies. But as the DMA comes into force, the reality looks rather different. In fact, the DMA creates complexity and uncertainty in the future of the internet in Europe.
Nowadays, Europeans online enjoy different choices of competing search engines and browsers which have different policies on user data use and privacy. The DMA threatens to upend that variety of choices. It imposes regulation on the tech giants designated as the ’gatekeepers’ of the internet, including Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Google.
The new act, which is one of the world’s toughest antitrust laws, has faced criticism from businesses, with hotel website Booking, which expects to be assigned gatekeeper status later this year, among the dissenting voices. Hotels are facing a significant challenge as 30% of their booking clicks have disappeared. This decline is attributed to the requirement for businesses to engage with customers through intermediaries—which often entails high commissions—whereas, previously, traffic from Google was free. European airlines are also experiencing similar concerns to those of the hotels.
Google is the default search engine for millions of Europeans. By deciding it has too much market share and looking to crack down on it, the EU risks cutting off the stream of online traffic which filters through to hotel sites, airline bookers, and other businesses in a variety of ways. For instance, the hotel industry worries the new rules will result in increased prominence for online travel agencies over direct hotel websites, harming hotels. The DMA chokes off companies’ growth and distorts markets for no clear benefit.
Another negative consequence of the act is the change in the display of Google Maps in Search. Many European users have expressed frustration over the inability to find the Google Maps tab on the search results page. Previously, users could easily access Google Maps through a simple search on their phone, website, or mobile app. However, thanks to the DMA, Google Maps now appears in a different way and lacks the easy, directly clickable map option it had before, leading to user dissatisfaction.
European users are complaining about the DMA because they can no longer enjoy Google’s features as they did before, while users in the rest of the world still can. Some users even thought that the changes were the result of a bug. When they posted about their experiences in Google’s online forum, an employee informed them that all of the changes are part of maintaining compliance with the DMA.
It is still too early to talk about the longer-term outcomes of the changes caused by attempts to comply with the new act. The eventual impact will depend on how customers react and how the big tech companies respond. But the short term results are not looking good. While the act aims to protect users, many companies are unhappy with its outcome. The initial reaction from both the technology industry and users has blurred the clarity of the act’s antitrust objectives. This confusion underscores the need for clearer guidelines and more transparent enforcement mechanisms in order to achieve the intended goals of promoting competition and safeguarding users’ interests in the digital market.
While the transparency and initial steps are welcome, the European Commission’s decision to implement the DMA in its current form reflects a lack of commitment to evidence-based competition policy in the digital ecosystem.