EU Initiates Investigations into Tech Giants Meta, Apple, and Alphabet Over Uncompetitive Practices

The EU has announced investigations into some of the biggest tech firms in the world over uncompetitive practices.

Meta, Apple, and Alphabet, which owns Google, are being looked into for potential breaches of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) introduced in 2022.

If they are found to have broken the rules, the firms can face huge fines of up to 10% of their annual turnover.

EU antitrust boss Margrethe Vestager and industry head Thierry Breton announced the investigations on Monday.

Just six companies have obligations under the DMA, but they are also the west’s largest tech Apple, Meta and Google to be investigated by the EUfirms: Alphabet, Apple, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Bytedance.

None of the firms are actually based in Europe – five of them are in the US, while Bytedance has its headquarters in Beijing.

Three of them are now facing questions just two weeks after submitting their compliance reports, which will have been meticulously compiled.

It comes three weeks after the EU fined Apple €1.8bn (£1.5bn) for breaking competition laws over music streaming.

Meanwhile, the United States accused Apple of monopolising the smartphone market in a landmark lawsuit against the tech giant introduced last week.

An Apple spokesperson says the company will constructively engage with the investigation and that they’re confident that their plan complies with the Digital Markets Act. They added that their teams established a variety of mechanisms to comply with the EU’s landmark legislation, as well as privacy and security protections for EU users.

“Throughout, we’ve demonstrated flexibility and responsiveness to the European Commission and developers, listening and incorporating their feedback,” they said.

Meanwhile a Meta spokesperson said the firm’s use of subscriptions as an alternative to advertising were “a well-established business model across many industries”.

“We designed Subscription for No Ads to address several overlapping regulatory obligations, including the DMA… we will continue to engage constructively with the Commission,” they said.

Alphabet has been approached for comment.

The EU said it will investigate five different possible acts of non-compliance in its announcement:

1 & 2 – Whether Apple and Alphabet are not allowing apps to freely communicate with users and make contracts with them