How two big new EU laws will try to rein in Big Tech

“It’s not really directly relevant what the court decides because few consumers use comparison shopping services any more”, says Zach Meyers of the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank.

...Meyers reckons that the law is likely to have more of an impact in terms of creating a level playing field on existing platforms than in fostering plucky competitors. “Despite all of these rules, it’s still incredibly difficult to go out there into the market and create entirely new platforms without having huge amounts of data, a lot of capital behind you and good relationships with other companies in the ecosystem”, he tells The Journal.

“If they became a little bit more afraid of competition, that would also be a good outcome – even if you don’t see market shares dramatically changing”.

...In that sense, it complements the Digital Markets Act. Meyers says “it’s impossible to look at the economic power of big tech companies, which is what the DMA tries to tackle, without also looking at their social and political power”.

The basic issue is that there’s a lot of bad stuff on the internet. The European Commission says that “citizens are exposed to increasing risks and harms online… These issues are widespread across the online ecosystem, but they are most impactful where very large online platforms are concerned”.