EU Moves to Order Meta to Restore Rival AI Assistants on WhatsApp

Brussels is replaying a familiar regulatory script: just as it forced Microsoft in 2004 to unbundle Windows Media Player and imposed a €497 m fine, it is again confronting a dominant gatekeeper accused of tilting a nascent market—in this case AI assistants—by controlling a critical platform (WhatsApp’s 2-billion-user network). The clash fits a decades-long trajectory of the EU acting as global tech referee, from the 1991 IBM mainframe case to the 2018 Google Shopping decision, reflecting the bloc’s preference for structural remedies when network effects threaten competition. Long-term, the episode underscores a systemic tension between data-rich platforms and emergent AI service providers: whoever controls user channels can tax or throttle innovation. Whether the EU can practically enforce open access—especially as AI becomes a general-purpose layer like electricity—will shape digital markets for the next century; if successful, it could embed interoperability norms akin to the 1913 Kingsbury Commitment that opened U.S. telecom networks, but failure may entrench a private toll-road model for AI distribution.