European Union officials have agreed a tentative agreement aimed at cracking down on the largest online companies dubbed digital "gatekeepers" by compiling a list of rules, AP reported

With these rules, the EU aims to prevent tech giants like Google, Meta and Apple from dominating digital markets.

After several months of negotiations, representatives of the European Parliament and the European Council have reached an agreement on the so-called Digital Markets Act (DMA). The preliminary agreement now has to be approved by the European Council and the European Parliament.

The new rules prevent gatekeepers from ranking their own products or services higher than others, or from reusing data collected from different services. There are also tighter restrictions on targeted online advertising and stricter requirements for different messaging services or social media platforms to work with each other - an attempt to avoid being dominated by a few companies as they have already built up large networks of users.

Violations can be punished by huge fines: up to 10% of the company's annual income. Repeat violations can result in fines of up to 20% of global turnover, which could amount to billions of dollars for wealthy Silicon Valley companies.