Imagine your iPhone telling you during setup that you can choose between Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant as your voice assistant… Sounds like a dream for an Apple device, doesn’t it? But there is a possibility that it will come true.
The European Union’s Digital Marketing Act (DMA), a set of rules targeting giant companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Apple, is expected to open the door for multi-platform messaging, as we recently reported. But it seems like it won’t be limited to that. If the law is enacted, its effects could be much wider. For example, it can let you choose your favorite digital assistants.
Policy makers in the EU have been working on DMA for nearly two years to “ensure fair and open markets”; It targets companies and digital services with large user bases (45 million monthly active users) and substantial revenues (75 billion Euros). If it goes into effect in October of this year, it will enable interoperability between large companies and third-party providers, provide customer access to data generated on companies’ services, give advertisers the ability to use their own tools to measure ad performance on these large company platforms (like Google AdSense), third-party messaging services. It will require the platforms to be opened to work with messaging services, opening up the platforms to promotions and the use of third-party transaction services. If all of this has confused you, let’s briefly summarize: Large companies may have to open the door to other services, even on their own devices or software.
Browser selection and search engine selection are already available in Apple’s iOS, macOS and iPadOS, as well as in Microsoft’s Windows, and in browsers such as Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome. However, virtual assistant preference is not asked and is usually included in the hardware.
Every iPhone comes with system-level built-in Siri. Google devices have Google Assistant by default. Nor is there an Echo device sold with the option to switch from Alexa to another assistant. But it doesn’t seem like it should surprise anyone that this situation will change soon.
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