Sources: UK plans to propose a bill next week enabling CMA's digital markets unit to target Big Tech companies with revenues of £25B+ globally or £1B in the UK
Draft bill expected within days that will put CMA's digital markets unit on a statutory footing Tweets: @fosspatents Tweets: Florian Mueller / @fosspatents : The last laugh may be on #Apple, not @CMAgovUK. With that bill, the CMA's Digital Markets Unit (DMU) may soon be able to rein in gatekeepers (also #Google, of course, though it's the gradually lesser walled-garden evil). https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This bill is the third act in a slow UK build-up. The Digital Markets Unit was created back in late 2020 as a CMA division meant to 'govern the behavior' of dominant platforms like Google and Facebook — but without statutory powers. After reports that plans were shelved, the DCMS revived the effort in 2022 with a mandate to clamp down on 'predatory practices'.
What changes now is legal force: the draft bill puts the DMU on a statutory footing and defines its targets by revenue — £25B+ globally or £1B in the UK. Florian Mueller's read is that Apple, the stricter walled garden, has more to lose than Google. The formal legislation announcement followed within days, with the government eyeing law in 2024.
First-order effects
- Apple and Google, the named gatekeepers, move from voluntary engagement with the DMU to facing a regulator that can designate them and impose binding conduct rules once the bill passes.
- The CMA gains a statutory mandate with clear revenue thresholds, ending its two-plus years of operating the DMU on a non-statutory basis.
Second-order effects
- Firms near the £25B global or £1B UK thresholds face designation risk, forcing UK-specific product and pricing decisions rather than global-only policy.
- The UK's threshold-based template gives other regulators a working model, raising the compliance burden for Big Tech of running parallel national gatekeeper regimes.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — unit created, powers shelved, then restored — platform regulation in the UK becomes a standing statutory regime rather than case-by-case antitrust, with designation lists as the new battleground between the CMA and Big Tech.
- The 2024 trajectory (the bill heading toward approval before the UK's July election) suggests gatekeeper regulation has become politically durable enough to survive electoral cycles.
The trend: Governments are converting ad-hoc antitrust scrutiny of Big Tech into standing statutory gatekeeper regimes with revenue-based thresholds, and the UK's DMU bill is a key data point in that shift.