Google, what (not) goes to Europe on the DSA and DMA regulations
What Google's EMEA president Matt Brittin said about the Digital Services Act (Dsa) and the Digital Markets Act (Dma) under approval by the EU
The European Parliament is preparing to approve two regulations, the Digital services act (Dsa) and Digital markets act (Dma), the new set of rules for the digital market.
Specifically, the DSA provides for the removal of illegal goods, services and contents; advertising transparency measures and obligations for large platforms to take action against the abuse of their systems.
The Digital Markets Bill (DMA) will instead attempt to control online gatekeepers by subjecting them to a list of ex ante bans.
Although the EU Commission does not mention any particular company, these new rules will impact Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft among others.
"It is important that these new rules support economic recovery, which is why Google wants to make sure they get the right rules, to protect and encourage innovation in the industry," said Matt Brittin, president of Google's EMEA.
“More choice is good for consumers. We want to be able to continue building new products and innovating in ways that are good for consumers. It is reasonable for companies to be closely monitored, but all companies, regardless of size, should benefit from legal certainty to create and build new products and services. DMA limits our ability to make changes to our products or introduce new features, ”said Google's Brittin.
According to the Mountain View giant, some of its services could face obstacles if Google were denied to get the most out of aggregate data as required by the DMA.
WHAT THE BRUSSELS REGULATORY PACKAGE INCLUDES
The Digital Service Act (DSA) is the EU legislative package that will regulate online digital platforms, including marketplaces, social media, search engines, arcade games and other internet services. This is the first legislative initiative for the sector since 2000 (the year of the Directive on electronic commerce).
Under the Digital Services Act, large social media companies and e-commerce sites will face new obligations to remove illegal and harmful content from their platforms. The second proposal, the Digital Markets Act, would subject companies labeled as gatekeepers to a list of dos and don'ts in order to prevent unfair competition. For example, such companies would be prohibited from using data obtained from business users to compete with them.
The platform giants will also be prohibited from using the data they collect online unless they make this data available to smaller platforms.
THE POSITION OF THE ITALIAN PRIVACY GUARANTOR
"If the DSA aims to make platforms responsible, making the exercise of their powers affecting users' rights transparent and therefore also" accountable ", the Digital Markets Act tends to promote competition by imposing in particular on gatekeepers (large platforms that they exercise a control function in access as intermediaries between end users and companies) specific obligations, which correspond to the Commission's penetrating supervisory powers ”explained the president of the Data Protection Authority Pasquale Stanzione in a recent hearing in the Chamber.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE DSA FOR THE BIG G SEARCH ENGINE
The Digital Services Act would therefore have a direct impact on Alphabet, which owns the world's two most popular search engines in Google and YouTube, and Facebook, the largest social media network with over 2.5 billion monthly active users.
“To give just an example – explains the Mountain View giant -, if you use Google Search to search for“ Thai food nearby ”, Google Maps shows you where the nearest restaurant is and provides its contact details. And other links allow you to book a table directly (if local health restrictions allow) or see if you can pick up your meal to take away. The DSA may prevent Google from developing such user-centric features. This would clearly have an impact not only on the way people use our services, but also on the thousands of restaurants that welcomed millions of diners in Europe this year using this free feature ”.
CONTINUE SUPPORTING SMEs
“European SMEs want tools that help them expand and grow their businesses, especially when we start to recover. That's why we want to be able to keep innovating and developing new products and features that help our customers. This is also why we want to ensure that basic free features such as search maps that were so vital in the pandemic are not retired, ”Matt Brittin pointed out.
THE IMPACT OF DMA
As we said, the current form of the DMA proposal aims to introduce a series of obligations and prohibitions for gatekeepers. However, the DMA proposal contains various provisions that may reduce the functionalities and therefore the quality of the platform services, affecting the value generated by their use.
Brittin added that the use of "aggregated data from Google Maps to produce movement reports" that has become "very useful for public health authorities" could also be another form of innovation facing an uncertain future as a result of new rules.
“We see this kind of integrated, user-centric functionality being developed quickly as a real benefit. And if we don't have the clarity, I think there could be an innovation inhibitor, ”said Google's president Emea.
WHAT GATEKEEPERS GO TO MEET
The sanctioning regime of the DMA (within the competence of the European Commission) provides for fines of up to 10% of the total annual worldwide turnover of the infringing company. Not only that: the systematic violation of the rules could lead to the application of extraordinary remedies such as the obligation to sell part of the company assets or company properties (splitting).
GOOGLE'S POSITION ON DMA
"We want to make sure that with DMA our European users can benefit from a first-class Internet experience and not a second-class Internet experience," said Google President Emea.
“Keeping all users safe while browsing online is important, something we've been working on since the early days of Research. This is why we want to ensure that key products and functionalities are protected within the boundaries of the DMA, and this impacts the user experience and security is minimized. "
"To achieve its stated goal of fostering innovation and driving economic recovery, more work is needed to fine-tune the DMA and add the right safeguards and safeguards," said Google's Matt Brittin.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/google-cosa-non-va-in-europa-sui-regolamenti-dsa-e-dma/ on Thu, 01 Jul 2021 06:36:07 +0000.