EU gatekeeper designations put services on different clocks

The European Commission has named Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft as its first Digital Markets Act gatekeepers, covering 22 core platform services. The September 6 designations start the main compliance countdown, but it isn’t a blanket designation of every product those companies sell.

File photo: European flags, © Håkan Dahlström, Spain, 2010. CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped and resized; historical EU illustration, not the announcement.

The distinction matters for businesses deciding what changes to expect. The announcement separates services already designated, services whose status needs further investigation, and services the Commission has decided not to designate. Those groups don’t share one deadline or one outcome.

The DMA process is separate from April’s DSA designations of 17 platforms and two search engines. Those designations triggered a separate four-month compliance period running from notification to each provider.

Being big isn’t the whole test

In its designation announcement, the Commission says Gmail, Outlook.com and Samsung Internet Browser meet the DMA’s thresholds. Nevertheless, it accepted arguments that they aren’t gateways for the relevant core platform services and didn’t designate them. Samsung consequently has no designated service in this first group.

Four other services remain under investigation: Microsoft’s Bing, Edge and Microsoft Advertising, plus Apple’s iMessage. Their providers have challenged the presumption that meeting the thresholds warrants gatekeeper designation for those services. The Commission says these rebuttal investigations should finish within a maximum of five months. Opening them isn’t the same as accepting the companies’ arguments.

Apple’s iPadOS is on a different track. It doesn’t meet the quantitative thresholds, but the Commission is investigating whether it should nevertheless be designated. That qualitative review has a stated maximum duration of twelve months.

Together, the decisions show why the headline count needs care: reaching a numerical threshold doesn’t settle every case, and falling short doesn’t necessarily end the inquiry.

Six months doesn’t mean nothing happens now

The Commission’s accompanying Q&A puts full compliance in March 2024. Article 3(10) ties the six-month period for Articles 5, 6 and 7 to a service being listed in a designation decision. Gatekeepers must also submit reports explaining how they’ve implemented the obligations, with non-confidential summaries made public. Those summaries should give businesses a way to examine proposed compliance rather than relying only on a platform’s assurances.

But the Q&A identifies two duties that apply from designation: establishing a compliance function and reporting intended concentrations under the DMA’s acquisition-reporting rules. For covered concentrations, the law requires notice before implementation, following the agreement, public bid announcement or acquisition of a controlling interest. That’s a reporting obligation, not a claim that every acquisition is prohibited. The six-month period isn’t a pause on every responsibility.

For the designated services, the rules address practical points of control: app installation and defaults, access to business-generated data, advertising verification and limits on stopping businesses from directing customers outside a platform. Which obligation applies depends on the service and the conduct, not simply whether a company appears among the six names.

Messaging isn’t an instant universal network

Messaging interoperability has another timetable inside the broader compliance process. The Q&A says initial basic functions, such as one-to-one text messaging, must be available for interoperability within six months. Group messaging follows within two years of designation, with individual and group audio and video calls within four. The initial phase also includes sharing images, voice messages, videos and files between two users where the gatekeeper provides those functions itself.

It also makes participation optional for non-gatekeeper messaging providers. Article 7 of the DMA requires a reference offer within the six-month compliance period and lets another provider request interoperability. A reasonable request must be implemented within three months of receipt. The Commission can exceptionally extend the statutory interoperability deadlines on a justified request to protect effective interoperability and security, including end-to-end encryption. Users remain free to decide whether to use the interoperable functions.

That makes the announcement the start of several regulatory processes, not a promise that every app will connect to every other app in March. For developers and businesses, the useful questions are which service is designated, which obligation applies and which clock has started.

The Commission says non-confidential versions of the designation decisions will be published once confidentiality issues have been resolved.