EU antitrust regulators turn focus on Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant

The market dominance of Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Alphabet’s Google Assistant has triggered concerns of potential anti-competitive practices, EU antitrust regulators said on Wednesday.
 
The comments from the European Commission come after a year-long inquiry into voice assistants and other internet-connected devices and responses from more than 200 companies.
 
Similar inquiries in the past into sectors, such as e-commerce, pharmaceuticals, financial services and energy have led to cases against companies and hefty fines.
 

Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant are the most popular voice-assistant devices in Europe, with the global market expected to double to 8.4 billion devices from 4.2 billion between 2020 and 2024, according to Statista.

 
“We saw indications that some practices that we know too well may lead to tipping and to the emergence of gatekeepers,” European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager told reporters.
 
“And from the preliminary results published today, it appears that our concerns are shared by many players,” Vestager said.
 
Vestager said it was too early to say if the inquiry would lead to cases against companies which will be decided after a 12-week long public consultation ending September 1 and a final report due in the first half of 2022.
 
The EU antitrust watchdog said respondents cited worries over certain exclusivity and tying practices related to voice assistants such as producers of smart devices being prevented from installing a second voice assistant on a device.

 
A second concern was about voice assistant providers promoting their own services or those of third parties via default settings on devices, thus restricting rivals.