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Google, Apple, Others To Be Regulated

While technology companies are going ahead to become strongly allied corporations, the United Kingdom (UK) plans to regulate the tech giants with rules tailored to each company over customer data use.

The tailored codes of conduct is part of a plan unveiled by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, which it says would proactively shape the behaviour of companies, BBC reports.

The CMA wants to be able to fine the tech companies for up to 10 per cent of their global turnover once they fail to comply with these rules which are intended to become operational from April 2020 but maybe stalled till 2022 if Members of Parliament vote to grant them the powers they need to enforce these laws.

The CMA says there would be three pillars to the new regime:

1. the new codes of conduct, which would detail how they do business with other companies and how they should treat their users

2. interventions to aid competition, with one proposal being to require the tech firms to make their services interoperable – for example allowing a proprietary app to run on a rival’s operating system or hardware

3. enhanced merger rules, which would allow the authority to block takeovers and other transactions until those involved could convince the watchdog that consumers would not be harmed as a consequence.

Although the CMA did not provide a list of the tech giants they plan to clamp down on, the new laws could focus on companies like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, Facebook and Airbnb.

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