Potential To Be Gatekeeper, European Commission Checks Apple Ads And Apple Maps

Apple Maps and Ads are being investigated by the European Commission (doc. unsplash).

JAKARTA EU (EU) regulators will check whether Apple's Ads and Maps services need to comply with strict regulations of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) at a time when Apple feels it needs to be excluded.

DMA is a digital rule launched by the European Union two years ago to limit the dominance of Big Tech, especially technology companies from the United States. With this rule, the European Commission wants to make equal competition.

The European Commission revealed that Apple informed them that Ads and Maps had met two DMA thresholds leading to the GTeekeeper. If designated as a GTeeper, the company must comply with all strict DMA rules.

Companies that fall into this category must have more than 45 million monthly active users. In addition, the company must also have a market capitalization of US$75 billion (Rp1,315 trillion).

The European Commission now has 45 working days to decide whether to give the term GTeeper to Maps and Apple Ads services. If stipulated, Apple has six months to comply with all DMA provisions.

Responding to this plan, Apple provides an official rebuttal. The company argues that the two services must be excluded from the status of the GTeekeeper. This rebuttal was submitted by Apple on Friday, November 28, 2025.

Apple says that Ads services are not big players in the EU's online advertising market. Apple also denies using data from internal services or other third parties for its advertising services.

For Maps, Apple states that the use of the map service is very limited in the European Union. Users tend to use other navigation services such as Google Maps and Waze.