Comment by Aloisius
5 days ago
The DMA doesn't care how easy for final customers to switch. If it did, Chrome wouldn't be designated a gatekeeper given how easy it is to switch to Firefox or brave or a dozen other browsers.
The DMA is about disintermediation of businesses from customers on large platforms with business and non-business users and durable user bases.
The problem with Chrome and the DMA has to do with the fact that Alphabet does these "don'ts":
- treat services and products offered by the gatekeeper itself more favourably in ranking than similar services or products offered by third parties on the gatekeeper's platform
- prevent users from un-installing any pre-installed software or app if they wish so (Chrome on Android can be disabled but not uninstalled)
- track end users outside of the gatekeepers' core platform service for the purpose of targeted advertising, without effective consent having been granted.
https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/about-dma_en#what-d...
None of that is used to determine who is a gatekeeper.
The assessment for whether Chrome qualified as a gatekeeper is less than 3 pages long. All they care about is whether they qualify as a platform and that they are over the threshold for active non-business users, active business users, revenue in the EU for enough time.
At no point did they concern themselves with potential anti-competitive practices in making the determination.
It's only after they're designated a gatekeeper that they're required to avoid things like self-preferencing or negotiating MFN terms with business. This conveniently allows the EU to pick and choose who the restrictive rules apply to on a company by company and product by product basis.
https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/2...
I think the document you really want to look at is this one, which is the actual regulation the DMA is operating under: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2022/1925/oj/eng
That regulation is very much concerned with anti-competitive practices. What we're seeing now is the application (or execution) of those regulations.
When I look at Regulation (EU) 2022/1925, it's pretty clear to me that Spotify does not have, for example, "very strong network effects, an ability to connect many business users with many end users through the multisidedness of these services, a significant degree of dependence of both business users and end users, lock-in effects, a lack of multi-homing for the same purpose by end users, vertical integration, and data driven-advantages."
4 replies →