The European Union has decided not to add Apple Maps or Apple Ads to list of online services sufficiently large enough to come under the purview of the Digital Markets Act.
When the EU first announced a list of gatekeepers, they included six Big Tech firms, ranging from Apple to ByteDance, then the owner of TikTok. In November 2025, the European Commission began investigating Apple Maps and also Apple Ads, to see if they meet this criteria.
Now according to Reuters, the regulator has decided against designating either service as a gatekeeper.
"The Commission has concluded that Apple does not qualify as a gatekeeper in relation to Apple Ads and Apple Maps," said the European Commission in a statement, "as neither of these platform services constitute an important gateway for business users to reach end users."
Bittersweet victory
Apple has therefore escaped regulation over Apple Maps and Apple Ads. The company has publicly thanked the EU for recognizing that the services are too small to count.
"These services face significant competition in Europe," said Apple in a statement about the ruling. "We're pleased the Commission recognized they do not meet the criteria for designation under the Digital Markets Act."
But the victory points to the failure of Apple Maps to equal the popularity of Google Maps — which is a gatekeeper. Specifically, it's a gatekeeper's core platform service, and the EU ruled on that in 2023.
It's not clear why it took until two years after its Google Maps ruling for the EU to consider Apple Maps. But then it's also not clear why it has taken since November 2025 to conclude Apple Maps and Apple Ads do not qualify as gatekeepers, since the definition would be seem to be clear.
According to EU legislation, a gatekeeper is a technology firm's service that has over 45 million active users per month. The firm must also least a 75 billion euro ($88.7 billion) market capitalization.
Maybe it took a phone call to Apple to ask what portion of its $4 trillion market cap is ascribed to Europe. But if so, the EU could have asked for Apple Maps usage statistics in the same call.
Apple's 3D models and satellite view are more compelling despite having less data than Google
Apple does not publish Apple Maps statistics so there's no way to assess how close to the figure of 45 million monthly users it is. Then, too, it's not possible to calculate how far ahead Google Maps is, because the EU's published ruling sanitized the usage figures, showing only ">45 million," for instance.
Even if it's calling Apple Maps too small to care about, Apple will benefit from the ruling because it means escaping more potential for fines under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
It's under the DMA's definition of a gatekeeper that the EU has previously fined Apple $2 billion over alleged anti-competitive actions with Apple Music. Similarly, the whole issue of the EU forcing Apple to open up the iPhone to rival app stores is under DMA regulations.
