Tech regulation: if you cannot beat them, join them, Microsoft says

Author Moonshot.news

Published on: 15/04/2022

Tech regulation is coming whether the industry participates or not, so companies might as well participate in those conversations now. “It doesn’t matter whether you like it or hate it,” Microsoft’s president and vice chair, Brad Smith, said in an interview with US business channel CNBC.

“And it’s right for people to point out the issues that cause concern, but more than anything, we need to lean in and figure out how to make this work, because it is not going to be a success unless we do that.”

Smith’s statement indicates another approach than for instance’s Apple’s that has argued that some antitrust legislation considered by lawmakers could harm consumers’ privacy.

He also commented on the discussions about the dominance of app stores. Critics have said that Google’s and Apple’s stores are too dominating.  The tech giants have been accused of maneuvering to protect this dominance and avoid competition. The two stores have been criticized for taking unreasonably big cuts when developers sell their apps via the stores.

There have been lots of publicity around court cases with for instance the developer of game Fortnite refused to use Apple´s in-app payment system and included its own to avoid Apple taking a big cut of the sales.

Apple has defended the dominance of the big app stores saying that going via its app store protects consumers and developers.

“If you can put standards in place in one app store that governs a million apps, you can put standards in place to make room for two or three or four app stores that all have to comply with the same objective security and privacy requirements,” Smith said.

“So you can always approach these issues and put these things into conflict with each other or you can find a way to reconcile these points.”

Commenting on the global discussions about big tech companies’ dominance he said:

“The Europeans, the British, the Australians, the Japanese, the Koreans, they’re all moving forward. We’re going to be better served as a country if the United States plays an active role as well.”

The European Parliament and the European Council recently agreed on the EU Digital Markets Act which aims to regulate digital markets to increase competition and limit the dominance of big tech. Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said:

“Large gatekeeper platforms have prevented businesses and consumers from the benefits 0f competitive digital markets. The gatekeepers will now have to comply with a well-defined set of obligations and prohibitions.”