5-point agenda: Europe's battle to rein in Big Tech
The European Union is on a mission to get US tech giants to stop avoiding tax, stifling competition, profiting from news content without paying and serving as platforms for disinformation and hate.
On Tuesday, the European Commission announced that online retail giant Amazon had agreed to make changes to its software to end two EU inquiries into its treatment of third-party sellers on its online marketplace.
The EU this week also warned Elon Musk that Twitter could be subject to sanctions under a future media law after the "worrying" suspension of several journalists from the messaging platform.
Here is a summary of the tussles between Silicon Valley and Brussels.
The digital giants are regularly criticised for dominating markets by elbowing out rivals.
In July, the European Parliament adopted the Digital Markets Act to curb the market dominance of Big Tech, with violations punishable with fines of up to 10 percent of a company's annual global sales.
Brussels has slapped over eight billion euros in fines on Google alone for abusing its dominant market position.
In 2018, the company was fined 4.3 billion euros -- the biggest ever antitrust penalty imposed by the EU -- for abusing the dominant position of its Android mobile operating system to promote Google's search engine.
Google lost its appeal against that decision on September 2022, though the fine was reduced to 4.1 billion euros.
The firm is also challenging a 2.4-billion-euro fine from 2017 for abusing its power in online shopping and a separate 1.5-billion-euro fine from 2019 for "abusive practices" in online advertising.
The EU has also gone after Apple, accusing it of blocking rivals from its contactless iPhone payment system, and fined Microsoft 561 million euros in 2013
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