The European Union agreed on Thursday to one of the world's most far-reaching laws to address the power of the biggest tech companies, potentially reshaping app stores, online advertising, e-commerce, messaging services and other everyday digital tools.

The lead committee in the European Parliament writing new tech rules passed measures Tuesday that could impact major U.S. and European tech companies. Lawmakers voted to approve measures in the draft Digital Markets Act that could mean:

1. A company's messaging or social media app is interoperable, to prevent users feeling forced to use one or the other because that's where their friends are
   
2. A ban on behavioral targeting of ads to minors
   
3. Fines of as much as 20% of a company's global annual sales for breaches for the law
   

Companies identified as "gatekeepers" and therefore set to be accountable under the DMA include Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple and Booking.com, and could later hit online marketplaces Zalando and Alibaba.

It looks like big platform operators will have to give both business users and endusers the right to port their data in realtime through APIs - third parties will be also allowed to do this on behalf of (at least) business users.

Electronic Frontier Foundation: The European Commission has released its public draft of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which, along with the Digital Services Act (DSA,) represents the first major overhaul of EU Internet legislation in the 21st Century. Like the DSA, the DMA takes aim at the monopolisation of the tech sector and proposes sweeping pro-competition regulations with serious penalties for noncompliance.