Feb. 13 (UPI) — The European Commission said the four platform services by Apple and Microsoft should not be considered “gatekeepers” as defined by the Digital Markets Act after an investigation on Monday.
Apple’s iMessage and Microsoft’s search engine Bing, browser Edge and Microsoft Advertising did not meet the qualifications of gatekeeper after an analysis by the commission’s Digital Markets Advisory Committee, the commission said in a statement.
Apple and Microsoft asked for a review of the platforms back in September. The commission said its new ruling does not affect its previous decision-making Apple and Microsoft as gatekeepers.
The gatekeeper designation would have forced the platforms to abide by numerous restrictions involving third-party vendors to meet the Digital Markets Act safeguards.
Last September, the European Commission designated Google‘s parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, TikTok’s parent ByteDance, Facebook’s parent Meta and Microsoft as digital gatekeepers, ordering them to ensure smaller tech companies are not hindered by their rules and given open access.
The law was meant to keep the larger companies from treating their own services and products more favorably than the same services offered by smaller third parties.
Spotify cited DMA rules last month in announcing that it would start offering in-app sales through iPhones for the first time because of Apple’s designation as a gatekeeper by the European Commission.
Before, Apple blocked such sales from appearing within its app. That forced Spotify to make transactions through Apple’s app store, which took a 30% cut from profits, which was also outlawed by the DMA.