What’s Going On Here?The European Union (EU) laid out the dos and the please, please don’ts for Big Tech on Tuesday, proposing two major new pieces of regulation. What Does This Mean?With these new rules, the EU is hoping to keep companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon from hoovering up all their smaller rivals’ business – as well as to protect customers from the unfairly high prices those firms could charge if that happened. The regulations should also force them to take more responsibility for any illegal conduct on the platforms. They’ll be some of the strictest on Big Tech in the world if they’re passed into law in their current form – but with all the political back-and-forth that’ll be involved, that’s a very big if. Why Should I Care?For markets: Naughty step.
If Big Tech companies misbehave under the proposed regulations, they could have to pay fines of up to 10% of global revenues (tweet this). The EU might be rubbing its hands at the prospect, with the five biggest tech companies – Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft – boasting combined revenues of almost a trillion dollars last year. And if they keep breaking the rules – the EU’s proposed a limit of three times in five years – they’re at risk of being broken up altogether.
The bigger picture: Fighting the giants.
It can be hard to keep up with the regulators’ battle with Big Tech, with US, UK, and Chinese regulators all having announced new fines, rules, or investigations in the last few days alone. But given regulators’ existing rulebooks weren’t written when data-hungry companies were something to think about, it’s easy to see why they’d be worried. The big challenge now, some experts reckon, is to rewrite the rules without hurting free speech and innovation in the years to come. | 
