Digital regulation continues to be at the forefront of regulator concerns, as authorities focus on technology companies through traditional antitrust tools and new digital markets regimes. Further legislation and guidance is on the cards for 2025, including with respect to artificial intelligence.
Enforcement hits tech titans in Europe
2024 fired the starting gun on a new era of global digital markets enforcement, spearheaded by the European Commission (EC) and European authorities taking significant action against Big Tech.
First, the EC exhibited a willingness to move quickly in the designation of gatekeepers under the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) and in the enforcement of their compliance with obligations under the regime. After designating 22 core platform services in 2023, the EC designated two further gatekeepers through the course of 2024 and successfully defended Bytedance’s appeal of its designation decision. Significantly, 2024 saw the EC open several investigations into gatekeepers’ compliance with steering and self-preferencing rules. In June 2024, the authority preliminarily found that Apple’s steering rules for the App Store breach the DMA. How events unfold in 2025 will clarify the EC’s resolve in this area.
In addition, as noted in our abuse of dominance article, 2024 was punctuated by multiple mammoth fines in Europe against tech corporations under traditional antitrust rules. Abuse of dominance fines in the tech sector—imposed by the EC and Spanish and French authorities alone—exceeded USD4 billion. Besides these fines, other investigations into Big Tech concluded with extensive commitments. For example, in July 2024, the EC accepted Apple’s expanded commitments to open up rivals’ access to “tap and go” technology on its iPhones. These EC decisions and probes together with action taken by other bodies in Europe, including the Italian and Spanish antitrust authorities, show that while the EC wishes to avoid “multiple investigations into the very same conduct,” authorities will continue to engage in rigorous antitrust enforcement alongside the new EU digital markets regime.
New legislation and guidance on the horizon
Regulators outside the EU have also continued to show dynamism in their approach to antitrust enforcement in digital markets throughout 2024. Some have sought to follow, to a greater or lesser extent, the approach taken by the DMA, with the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) signing dedicated digital markets regimes into law during 2024. The EC and the U.S. also held their fourth Joint Technology Competition Dialogue with the purpose of strengthening cooperation to ensure and promote fair competition in the digital economy.
The UK’s regime, introduced by the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCC), took effect on January 1, 2025, and the CMA quickly set to work. Within weeks it had commenced designation investigations in relation to search and search advertising, and mobile ecosystems. Another is set to follow before the summer. Designated firms will be subject to binding but tailored conduct requirements, potentially taking the form of, e.g., prohibition of self-preferencing or restrictions on interoperability. Non-compliance will risk fines of up to 10% of global turnover. It will be interesting to see how the outcomes of these investigations tie in with the U.K. government’s push for the CMA to use the new rules “proportionately and collaboratively” and, more generally, for its work to drive growth and innovation.
In APAC, Japan’s Smartphone Software Competition Promotion Act (SSCPA) also seeks to target the establishment of potentially anticompetitive digital ecosystems by mirroring the DMA with gatekeeper-style designations for certain Big Tech players. The new regime will become effective in 2025, with the cost of violation at 20% of their domestic sales generated by the relevant products (up to 30% for repeat offenses).
Several jurisdictions are following a slower path, possibly waiting to see how enforcement of the EU’s DMA pans out. The Brazilian regulator, for example, is still considering if and how to implement ex ante regulation for digital markets. Brazilian congress debates on a DMA-equivalent regime are taking place against the backdrop of the imposition of a significant injunction order and the opening of new investigations into Apple and Google in relation to the iOS and Android ecosystems respectively.
Regulators in Australia and India have also taken initial steps towards the introduction of dedicated DMA-style digital markets regimes. We expect the scope of any such regimes to start to take shape during the course of 2025.
However, other regulators have opted for a different approach. In 2024, the Korean Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) amended its merger review guidelines to clarify how merger control regulations apply to the digital market. In particular, the revisions alter the procedure by which the KFTC treat “killer acquisitions” by online platforms and update approaches to market definition, the competitive assessment, and the analysis of efficiencies for mergers in the digital sector. The KFTC is also seeking to curb monopolistic practices by digital platforms and emerging technologies through amending Korean antitrust law to prohibit self-preferencing, tying services, restricting multi-homing and demanding most-favored-nation treatment, and raise maximum fines.
Authorities also sought to re-calibrate and allocate more resources to digital market enforcement. For example, Singapore’s antitrust authority established a new Data and Digital Division, tasked with tackling digital market enforcement generally, as well as monitoring relevant data science and digital regulatory developments globally.
More broadly, 2024 also provided valuable insights into how traditional theories of antitrust enforcement may develop to become digitally compatible. Former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi produced a two-volume report which contained various policies and strategies aimed at bringing about a paradigm shift in antitrust enforcement in preparation for a new era of digital innovation. These proposals included a “New Competition Tool” for antitrust investigations which would involve start-ups and legally recognized “Innovative European Companies” proposing their own solutions in EC investigations, as well as an “innovation defence” in antitrust and merger investigations. While the feasibility of such measures has been scrutinized, the radical nature of these proposals could be used as a blueprint by authorities seeking to equip themselves with new tools to regulate the constantly evolving digital environment. The increased focus of regulators, armed with an expanding arsenal of resources and enforcement options at their disposal, mean that 2024 has set the scene for increased scrutiny of digital markets enforcement into 2025 and beyond.
Artificial intelligence—a future focus for digital enforcement
Although yet to materialize by way of significant enforcement action, authorities globally are also increasingly focused on the impact of the rapidly developing AI market. The U.K.’s CMA has arguably been at the forefront of considering and explaining how the misuse of AI and other algorithmic systems, such as pricing algorithms and personalized offers, creates real potential for antitrust harm, as well as expressing concerns about the market power of incumbents across the AI foundation models value chain. Benefitting from dedicated in-house capability in technology, data, and AI, it published an AI strategic update and AI Foundation Models update paper. Notably, the CMA has mooted critical inputs for developing Foundation Models, such as compute, as another potential activity for designation under the U.K.’s digital markets regime.
Reports into innovation and generative AI also headlined the antitrust agenda in Australia, with the Digital Platform Regulators Forum examining generative AI as part of a wider digital markets inquiry by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). Other APAC antitrust authorities, including those in India, Japan, and South Korea, have also been studying the competitive impact of AI. In France, the authority issued a detailed opinion on generative AI markets and made a number of recommendations, including to consider the possibility of designating as gatekeepers under the DMA companies providing services giving access to generative AI models in the cloud.
In the U.S., the Department of Justice (DOJ)’s challenge of a property management software company’s use of AI-powered algorithms to allegedly facilitate systematic coordination between competing landlords has also been a notable development. The DOJ’s deputy attorney general noted “Make no mistake: Training a machine to break the law is still breaking the law.” There are separate ongoing investigations into major players in the AI value chain. In addition, in January 2025, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a report on the partnerships and investments between the largest cloud service providers and two generative AI developers. The report outlines key aspects of the structure of cloud service providers and AI developer partnerships, and potential competition implications that may develop over time relating to the impact these partnerships have on access to certain inputs, key resources, increased switching costs, and access to sensitive information. More generally, given the international nature of digital markets and AI-related issues, we expect certain antitrust authorities to deepen their cooperation on the issues in step with the global AI race heating up.
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