An interview with Gerard de Graaf, the director of a new EU office in San Francisco, on the DMA coming into force on November 1 and its impact on tech companies
The Digital Markets Act will force big tech platforms to break open their walled gardens in 2023, says the EU's new ambassador to Silicon Valley. Tweets: @tariqkrim Tweets: @tariqkrim : What Europe needs to do is: -embrace open protocols allowing a new generation of platforms to exist -allow other browsers with full HTML5 to exist on the iPhone so we can compete with apps -fund a new generation of infrastructure that we own. https://www.wired.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The EU's plan for a San Francisco office has moved from rumor to reality: Gerard de Graaf now runs it, and his first public task is explaining the Digital Markets Act as it takes force on November 1. The interview lands after US tech firms' lobbying push failed to win substantial changes and after Apple and Google publicly criticized the law's gatekeeper obligations — so Brussels is now selling the rules directly to the companies they bind.
De Graaf's framing — walled gardens opening in 2023 — pairs with Tariq Krim's wishlist of open protocols and full HTML5 browsers on iPhone, sketching what compliance could actually unlock. The office is also a standing liaison ahead of the DSA's own rollout, making this the EU's forward base for both laws.
First-order effects
- Apple, Google, and other designated gatekeepers shift from opposing the DMA to executing compliance programs by 2023, with de Graaf's office as their direct interlocutor instead of distant Brussels.
- Developers and rival browser makers get a named EU channel in San Francisco to press interoperability demands like alternative engines on iPhone.
Second-order effects
- If gatekeepers must open platforms under the DMA while separately loosening profiling-based recommendations once the DSA takes effect, their default control over distribution and recommendation surfaces erodes from two directions at once.
- Competitors that build on newly opened interfaces gain leverage in negotiations with platforms whose switching costs were previously locked in by design.
Third-order effects
- Brussels' enforcement posture hardens rather than softens after launch — officials already signal plans to intensify DMA and DSA enforcement in 2026 — pointing to a durable transatlantic regulatory clash rather than a one-time compliance event.
- The San Francisco office model suggests the EU intends to govern global platforms at their source, embedding regulators where design decisions are made rather than litigating products after release.
The trend: Platform regulation is shifting from legislation written in Brussels to permanent, locally embedded enforcement aimed at gatekeepers' core architecture.