[walkingthisquai]

Well... Though I agree with you in principle, the DMA does target specific gatekeeper companies and the criteria for these were set conveniently to ensure no EU company is regulated by it. So I can see their point a little

[radlad]

Isn't the question whether they were set because they were US companies, or because they are dominant gatekeepers on the Internet?

5/7 designated gatekeepers are US companies: https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers_en

[dwaite]

I thought Booking Holdings Inc was also American.

There are zero European companies, including Spotify - the #1 music streaming marketplace in the world.

[radlad]

My mistake. While Booking.com is HQ'd in Amsterdam, Booking Holdings is indeed a US company (also responsible for Priceline, Kayak, and OpenTable.)

> There are zero European companies, including Spotify - the #1 music streaming marketplace in the world.

This still doesn't answer the actual question of whether the gatekeepers were selected because they are US companies, or because they are are Internet gatekeepers. I don't find it surprising that the US's legal and economic culture resulted in more conglomerate gatekeepers than other nations.

[Zopieux]

What exactly does Spotify gatekeep though?

[Aloisius]

They're a gatekeeper in the same way YouTube or TikTok is.

They control access of businesses, in this case music labels, to the final customer.

[radlad]

That's not really true. You can easily switch to Deezer, Apple Music, Tidal, Qobuz, YouTube Music, etc. You'll have access to just about the exact same library of music.

You can't just ignore YouTube, TikTok, Facebook Marketplace and still have access to the content they gatekeep.

[Aloisius]

The DMA doesn't care how easy for final customers to switch. If it did, Chrome wouldn't be designated a gatekeeper given how easy it is to switch to Firefox or brave or a dozen other browsers.

The DMA is about disintermediation of businesses from customers on large platforms with business and non-business users and durable user bases.

[makeitdouble]

I'd argue this style of concentrating power under a single giant company is mostly American style.

EU companies tend to keep group entities separate instead of running for absolute synergies. For instance the AOL-Time-Warner-Direct-Dish kind of merger is pretty much unheard of.

[jakob_endler]

thats only kinda right. The DMA does include booking.com as a gatekeeper, which is european. But most gatekeepers (except booking and tiktok) are US-based

[Aloisius]

Booking Holdings is American. They bought booking.com in 2005.

[bojan]

Booking.com was European, is not any more. It is now a subsidiary of Booking Holding (formerly Priceline), based in Connecticut.

[chgs]

That’s of course the reason these types of companies are American - Americans are rich and can buy out foreign companies which are successful.

[nickff]

There are plenty of EU companies that buy into new markets or opportunities, they just fall outside of these laws; Siemens is a good example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens