Taking on Big Tech Hello, you're listening to the Marketplace

Morning Report from the BBC World Service. I'm Vivian Noona stepping in for Leanna

Burn. Good morning. Developments today in Brussels could open a new battlefront between

US Tech Giants and the European Union. Governments across the world have been playing catch-up

when it comes to regulating the power of Big Tech. Today the EU will publish a list of companies

known as gatekeepers that will be subject to new rules aimed at encouraging competition

and stopping big players from crushing small arrivals by buying them out.

Edith Hancock covers antitrust issues in Brussels for Politico. Earlier she told me which companies

are in the frame. Those are companies that run digital platforms and services that are entrenched

in their respective markets. So we're expecting that to really focus on all of the Big Five US Tech

companies, Apple, Microsoft, Alpphabet, Amazon, Meta. But also there was a notification period

earlier this year where by dance which ends TikTok did also notify a potential gatekeeper status

to the commission and we also saw Samsung do the same. Do we expect some kind of pushback

from these big companies then? There is a possibility for companies to rebut a designation given

by the commission. The commission has said that this is only something that can happen in

exceptional circumstances but honestly everybody is expecting there to be at least some pushback

from these gatekeepers. We've already seen reports that for example Microsoft disagrees with

the premise that it's so in search engine being might be caught under the scope of the regulation

because compared to Google search you know being is really a much smaller competitor.

And how will users notice this legislation being passed and what will change for those users?

We're seeing suggestions that we might have the ability to download an app just from a pop-up

advertisement on your computer screen rather than having to go all the way through somebody else's

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