Apple, Google, and Meta could face massive fines after European Union regulators announced investigations into the three major tech companies for alleged antitrust violations.
The tech giants are being targeted under Europe's Digital Markets Act, which first went into effect on March 7. The DMA aims to break the three companies' monopolies, along with those of Amazon, Microsoft and ByteDance.
European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton explained that the EU's quick response - just weeks after the DMA went into effect - is intended to protect Europeans from exploitation.
"We're talking about the protection of our citizens, we can't just sit around and wait," he said, according to the BBC.
This investigation also coincides with the United States Attorney General initiating a lawsuit against Apple, because the company is monopolizing the smartphone market.
EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager and Breton announced that the investigations would look into five points of contention.
The EU believes that Apple might not be giving users enough choices and is not allowing apps to freely communicate with users. Under the DMA, the company is supposed to allow third parties to sell apps to consumers - something the company previously pushed back against, claiming it was a security risk.
Apple is also supposed to give users more freedom to uninstall apps, choose browsers and change their products' default settings.
Meta has come under fire for offering to charge users fees so that the customers can then opt out of having data used for advertisements. Meta says that their new subscription-based model complies with EU regulations.
"Subscriptions as an alternative to advertising are a well-established business model across many industries, and we designed Subscription for No Ads to address several overlapping regulatory obligations, including the DMA," a spokesperson said, according to Reuters.
Like Apple, Google's parent company Alphabet is accused of not letting apps communicate with users. The EU regulators are also investigating whether Google gives its own products preference in search results.
It remains unclear how long it will take for the tech companies and the EU to resolve their disputes.
"We suspect that the suggested solutions put forward by the three companies do not fully comply with the DMA," said Vestager, according to the BBC. "We will now investigate the companies' compliance with the DMA, to ensure open and contestable digital markets in Europe."
