A bipartisan coalition of US senators has brought back to the policy table the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, a bill commonly known by the acronym AICOA.
The initiative, led by the Republican Chuck Grassley and the Democratic Amy Klobuchar, aims to curb the business practices of the world’s largest tech companies.
The measure specifically targets digital platforms that generate annual gross revenues exceeding $175 billion and reach at least 34% of American households, or 34% of monthly active users aged twelve and older.
Among the giants directly affected by the rules are Google, Amazon, Meta, and, inevitably, Apple.
AICOA: The American bill aimed at promoting competition
The legislative proposal establishes a series of targeted prohibitions to dismantle monopolistic dynamics. If the law were finally passed, large platforms would be categorically prohibited from favoring their own services at the expense of those offered by third parties, as well as using private corporate data to compete unfairly with emerging entities.
Additionally, lawmakers intend to prevent the imposition of fixed default settings, ban retaliation against companies that raise legal concerns, and ensure that users can transfer their data from one ecosystem to another without artificial obstacles.
The text, supported by brands such as Mozilla, Proton, Yelp and DuckDuckGo, would confer to the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission new sanctioning powers, while ensuring the maintenance of essential protections for national security and intellectual property.
Cupertino’s Strong Opposition
Apple’s reaction was immediate and particularly severe. The California-based multinational criticized the inclusion of rules that it describes as European-style, stating that such restrictions would stifle technological innovation and impose alterations to the user experience never requested by citizens.
A central theme of Cupertino’s defense concerns device integrity: according to company executives, forced openness of operating systems and the requirement to allow external app stores would severely compromise privacy, exposing consumers to risks and weakening the parental controls necessary to protect minors.
To bolster its case, Apple has drawn a direct parallel between the United States Senate’s requests and the European Union’s Digital Markets Act.
The company notes how the implementation of the DMA has already caused significant delays in development, blocking, for example, the integration of recent AI tools on European devices due to the complex interoperability rules.
