On September 6, the European Commission appointed the six gatekeepers following the implementation of the Digital Markets Act, better known as the DMA.
In total, 22 basic platform services provided by gatekeepers have been designated. The six designated gatekeepers, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft, will have six months to ensure full compliance with the DMA obligations for each of their designated core platform services. Among these obligations, most notably, gatekeepers will be required to allow third parties to interoperate with their own services in certain specified situations and to allow their business users access to the data they generate in their use of the gatekeeper's platform.
Under the DMA, the European Commission may designate digital platforms as gatekeepers if they provide an important gateway between businesses and consumers in relation to basic platform services.