Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority
TL;DR
- The Ecu Fee has concluded its investigation into Apple’s iMessage and Microsoft’s Bing, Edge, and Promoting products and services.
- The firms aren’t being designated as gatekeepers for those core platform products and services below the Virtual Markets Act, that means they gained’t be required to agree to strict interoperability regulations.
- Consequently, Apple needn’t open up iMessage within the EU, even if the corporate preemptively introduced RCS beef up coming to the iOS Messages app.
Apple’s iMessage used to be below investigation through the Ecu Fee to decide if the provider fell below antitrust rules envisaged during the Virtual Markets Act (DMA). There have been rumors that the EU used to be leaning in opposition to exempting iMessage from those antitrust regulations. Nowadays, the Ecu Fee has officially introduced that it has now not designated Apple’s iMessage and Microsoft’s Bing, Edge, and Promoting products and services as gatekeepers of core platform products and services below the DMA, that means they gained’t wish to be opened as much as competition.
Because the Ecu Fee introduced thru a press unencumber (h/t TheVerge), Apple and Microsoft aren’t being designated as “gatekeepers” for core platform products and services comparable to iMessage, Bing, Edge, and Microsoft Promoting. The selections conclude the Fee’s investigations, so each Microsoft and Apple can relaxation simple to this extent. Then again, the Fee notes that this doesn’t impact their designation of “gatekeeper” for his or her different core platform products and services. The former choice continues to impact Apple’s App Retailer, Safari, iOS, and Microsoft’s Home windows, whilst an investigation into iPadOS is ongoing.
The DMA comes into drive within the EU on March 7, 2024. Below this law, core platform products and services run through gatekeepers, such because the App Retailer, Safari, and iOS, must agree to a number of new duties, together with making the platform interoperable with third-party products and services. Apple introduced sweeping adjustments for the EU (simplest) that agree to the phrases set out within the DMA, despite the fact that critics were unsatisfied with the measures, terming them as “malicious compliance” in some circumstances.
Prior to this choice, Apple introduced that RCS beef up is coming to the Messages app on iOS, the place it’ll paintings along iMessage. Had the EU dominated in a different way, Apple would were pressured to open iMessage to others and make allowance interoperability with Android, perhaps finishing the “blue bubble vs inexperienced bubble” texting wars. For now, the top isn’t in sight.