Apple has become the first big tech company to be charged with breaking the European Union’s new digital markets rules, three days after the tech giant said it would not release artificial intelligence in the bloc due to regulation.
On Monday, the European Commission said that Apple’s App Store was preventing developers from communicating with their users and promoting offers to them directly, a practice known as anti-steering.
“Our preliminary position is that Apple does not fully allow steering. Steering is key to ensure that app developers are less dependent on gatekeepers’ app stores and for consumers to be aware of better offers,” Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition chief said in a statement.
On X, the European commissioner for the internal market, Thierry Breton, gave a more damning assessment. “For too long Apple has been squeezing out innovative…
