Google criticized the two laws on markets and digital services that the European Commission (EC) presented today , considering that they are directed “at a small group of companies.”
“While we will review the Commission’s proposals in detail in the coming days, we are concerned that they appear to be specifically targeted at a small group of companies ,” Google Vice President for Government Affairs and Public Policy Karan Bhatia said today.
The two laws are intended to prevent the dominant abuse in the market of large technology platforms .
Specifically, that of digital markets provides for fines of up to 10% of the annual global income of these companies if they fail to comply with a series of obligations to limit their business power and, ultimately, force them to sell part of their companies if they are it has fined them three times in five years.
In addition, the digital services law sets fines of up to 6% of their annual income globally if they do not remove illegal content from their web pages – even if it comes from third parties – unless they are unaware that it is prohibited material.
Brussels avoided mentioning specific companies in the laws and chose to establish a series of “objective” criteria , said EC Vice President Margrethe Vestager and Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton.
The EC understands that large platforms are those that have more than 45 million active users per month or those that achieve an annual turnover in the European Economic Area (EEA) equal to or greater than 6.5 billion euros in the last three years .
It will be the large platforms that decide if they belong to this category and, if they evade their obligations, the EC may launch an investigation. “We will continue to propose new rules that support innovation, increase accountability and foster economic recovery for the benefit of European consumers and businesses,” Bhatia said.