Welcome back to Emlex's podcast, the first for 2023. I'm James Panicki, and it's great to have your company today.

Now, to kick off the year, we thought we'd do something a bit different.

In the very last days of 2022, we asked members of our editorial team to spend a few minutes

talking into a microphone, reflecting not so much on the year that was, but pondering what

lies ahead. Our plan is to slide those stream of consciousness reflections into your feed over coming

weeks, confident that you'll find plenty in them to fire up your imagination. And what better

place to start than the hometown of Emlex's origin story, Brussels. It's from there that our

editor-in-chief has been pondering what the near future holds for big tech, both in the EU and globally.

Here's Lewis Crofts.

Every year I've been doing this job, it's been a truism to say, next year will be a big year.

It will be a big year for big tech.

And that's probably true this time around as well.

The landscape's changing for big tech quite seriously. There's a

load of new legislation being cooked up around the world and there's loads of separate

antitrust cases and private lawsuits. It's as furious as it's ever been to be honest. I think the big

difference for next year is everyone's been waiting to see which of this new

legislation really starts to bite. So the EU spent most of last year trying to adopt the

Digital Markets Act, which it's done successfully. Next, it will really start to force these companies

to start admitting that they're gatekeepers, discussing with the regulator what that means

for changing their access to data or changing access to app stores and so forth.

Why is that important?

Because, well, legislation

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