Georgetown Law
Technology Review

Recently, Google, Apple, and Meta have condemned the EU’s regulation of Big Tech. The EU’s major competition regulation for online platforms, the Digital Markets Act (“DMA”), went into effect in March 2024. Critics, including President Donald Trump and various U.S. tech giants, claim the DMA harms consumers and functions as a form of economic protectionism designed to unfairly bolster European tech startups against foreign competition. This year alone, Apple and Meta have been fined hundreds of millions of euros each for breaching their obligations under the DMA. Meanwhile in the U.S., a judge ruled in November 2025 that Meta did not create a monopoly with its purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp, a conclusion that is the first of its kind globally.

This Legal Impression reviews evidence from parallel U.S. and European antitrust enforcement actions against Apple to show that the DMA is a more efficient and potent way to compel Big Tech to comply with fair competition laws. The DMA operates proactively, allowing competition enforcers in the EU to compel compliance with the law immediately instead of relying on slow-moving litigation.

Traditional U.S. Competition Law

While the U.S. and Europe both have broad antitrust laws, some argue that existing U.S. doctrines struggle to regulate digital markets. Existing U.S. law focuses on measuring consumer welfare, often using market prices as a benchmark. However, the consumer welfare standard is difficult to apply to online platforms because many products are free to users. The profit is made by marketing users’ data and attention to advertisers, so price increases are not typically borne by consumers.

U.S. antitrust enforcement “typically depends on case-specific facts rather than the application of bright-line rules,” which makes litigation slow and costly. While antitrust cases drag their feet, digital markets can change quickly, making it difficult for judges to craft effective remedies even if liability is found. For example, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) brought its monopoly case against Meta in 2020, but by the time the District Court ruled in 2025, TikTok had emerged as a potential competitor to Meta, a key factor in why the FTC lost the case. Ruling for Meta, Judge Boasberg noted, “The landscape that existed only five years ago . . . has changed markedly . . . Today [TikTok] holds center stage as Meta’s fiercest rival.” These difficulties have led some to argue for the U.S. to adopt prescriptive rules designed to promote competition in digital markets.

The Digital Markets Act

The EU created a forward-looking rulebook for tech platforms through the DMA to address the shortcomings of the EU’s traditional competition regime as applied to Big Tech. The DMA established objective criteria for regulators to designate certain online platforms as “gatekeepers” in an effort to promote competition and consumer choice. “Gatekeepers” have significant market impact, provide a platform “which is an important gateway for business users to reach end users,” and enjoy an entrenched position in the market. Companies with platforms that the European Commission determined meet the “gatekeeper” criteria include U.S.-based tech giants Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Booking (booking.com), and Microsoft, as well as the China-based parent company of TikTok, ByteDance. None of the designated gatekeepers are European companies.

The DMA spells out specialized obligations for gatekeepers to protect user data, privacy, and competition. For example, gatekeepers, “shall . . . enable end users to easily un-install any software applications on the operating system of the gatekeeper.” These innovations were designed to remedy “the challenges . . . posed by the conduct of gatekeepers that are not necessarily dominant in competition-law terms.”

Under the DMA, the European Commission can fine a gatekeeper up to 10% of its global annual turnover for violations. Critics like Mark Zuckerberg have argued these fines operate as “tariffs” on U.S. tech firms. Others argue that the DMA increases the costs of doing business in Europe, which companies may pass on to consumers, and creates uncertainty about what compliance with the law means, which can chill innovation.

The U.S. has no comparable scheme specifically designed to tackle the competition law problems posed by digital markets. The recent cases brought against Apple in the U.S. and EU for the same conduct illustrate why the European system is more efficient.

Epic v. Apple Litigation

In April 2025, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found Apple in “willful violation” of an injunction issued in January 2024. Her court order prevents Apple from “imposing any commission or any fee on purchases that consumers make outside an app” and restricts Apple’s ability to regulate links to app developer websites within an app.

This ruling stemmed from the case Epic Games brought against Apple for unfair practices related to its App Store. The initial injunction, issued in 2021 (before numerous appeals by Apple), found that Apple’s 30% commission on purchases was uncompetitive. It also enjoined Apple from prohibiting app developers, like Epic Games or Spotify, from using links to external payment websites to bypass Apple’s full 30% commission.

Apple responded by lowering its commission by a mere 3%, to 27%, and by making it more difficult for customers to find and use external links. Judge Gonzalez Rogers found that Apple aimed “to dissuade customer usage of alternative purchase opportunities and maintain its anticompetitive revenue stream . . . in direct defiance of this Court’s injunction.”

The April 2025 court order requires Apple to allow app developers to link users to their own websites and external payment systems to bypass Apple’s commission. For example, “Amazon’s iPhone Kindle app now shows an orange ‘Get Book’ button that links to Amazon.com.” According to Forbes, “companies implementing direct-to-consumer strategies outside the App Store are seeing revenue lifts of 14% to 16% on average, both because developers are keeping more revenue and players are spending more.” The revenue saved could allow app developers to reinvest in their apps, potentially leading to more innovation and an enhanced user experience.

On appeal, the Ninth Circuit affirmed much of Judge Gonzalez Rogers’ order and her decision to hold the company in contempt, but remanded back to Gonzalez Rogers on Apple’s ability to charge a commission. The opinion stated, “Apple is entitled to some compensation for the use of its [app store],” which allows Epic to profit from in-app purchases on IOS devices.

DMA Enforcement

In the same week in April, the European Commission fined Apple €500,000,000 for violations of the DMA for similar conduct by Apple’s App Store. The European Commission explained that app developers should be able to “inform” and “steer” customers to alternative payment systems outside the Apple App Store ecosystem “free of charge.”

In the EU, the process from a DMA non-compliance investigation to the issuance of a fine took just 13 months. Apple quickly announced changes to its EU App Store fees and policies to comply with the DMA and avoid future fines. Apple’s new rules for app developers in Europe allow Apple to charge a 5% commission “on all digital purchases made outside the App Store.”

In the United States, virtually the same outcome took nearly five years, only for Apple to ignore the initial injunction, and there is still no clarity on what commission Apple can charge app developers in the U.S. These difficulties arise because in the U.S. there are no statutory competition obligations written with digital platforms in mind.

Conclusion

Online platforms present unique challenges to reactive, case-by-case antitrust investigations. Without prospective laws aimed at reigning in Big Tech, the U.S. will remain reliant on years-long and expensive investigations to enforce fair competition in digital markets. The EU recognized that and developed the DMA as a proactive rulebook for more efficient enforcement. Rather than chilling innovation, the DMA is giving smaller companies more capital to reinvest in their products and benefit consumers. Rather than imposing tariffs on foreign firms, the DMA compels compliance with pro-consumer remedies, which are difficult to enforce in court on the back end, as the slow-moving U.S. litigation against Meta and Apple illustrates. The parallel enforcement actions against Apple in the U.S. and EU show the EU’s system is faster, more effective, and compels compliance immediately. It’s time for the U.S. to develop similar tools.