Google, Apple and Amazon’s revenue could take a hit if EU regulators tighten antitrust rules as an April 4 report suggests, though Facebook may fare better than rivals. The report puts the spotlight on “intermediation infrastructure”, “rule-setting platforms” and the concept of “data interoperability”.
While may of the proposals can’t be adopted without parliamentary approval, some recommendations may be applied in Amazon and Apple’s ongoing probes over their dual roles as marketplace providers and sellers. The report suggests that digital platform’s tendency to promote their own products over rivals should be presumed anticompetitive unless companies prove otherwise. This change isn’t possible without legislative intervention, yet regulators may still have room to reinterpret the law.
Google, Apple and Amazon have more to fear than Facebook from this new antitrust report as the focus is on limiting dominant companies’s ability to leverage their platforms’ market power to favor their own products or services. Yet, the report seems to favor better rule-setting procedures for platforms, or even enforcement actions, rather than breaking up the internet behemoths. This means companies’s rules about access to their platforms should be fair, non-discriminatory and favor users.
Facebook’s biggest risk stems from a proposal to impose stricter data portability obligations than the ones under the General Data Protection Regulation. The report suggests that data interoperability requirements should be imposed on some dominant companies. This is similar to data portability, but with real-time, potentially standardized data access. This proposal’s adoption would allow users or those acting behalf to transfer data between platforms while preserving accuracy.
