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.
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.
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.
The problem with Chrome and the DMA has to do with the fact that Alphabet does these "don'ts":
- treat services and products offered by the gatekeeper itself more favourably in ranking than similar services or products offered by third parties on the gatekeeper's platform
- prevent users from un-installing any pre-installed software or app if they wish so (Chrome on Android can be disabled but not uninstalled)
- track end users outside of the gatekeepers' core platform service for the purpose of targeted advertising, without effective consent having been granted.
There are zero European companies, including Spotify - the #1 music streaming marketplace in the world.