Final report in the Digital Platforms Inquiry charts the way forward on protecting consumers and small businesses from harm in digital markets

On 23 June 2025, the ACCC published its tenth and the final report following a comprehensive five-year investigation into Digital Platforms. 

With over 400 pages, the final report has a considerable amount of information to digest. In this article, we highlight some of the key findings and recommendations that could impact Australian businesses.

The lead-up to the final report - eight years and three inquiries

Since 2017, and across three inquiries, the ACCC has published fourteen reports and made thirty-five separate recommendations.

The reports from the Inquiry are a treasure trove of deep analysis into the changing nature of the way Australians engage with the digital world and comparisons with overseas trends and developments.

The reviews have already led or contributed to significant legislative reform in Australia, particularly in the digital economy, including:

• Strengthening the unfair contracts regime
• The Scams Prevention Framework Act, and
• The ongoing overhaul of the Australian Privacy regime.

Conclusion of the Digital Platform Services Inquiry

This final report focuses on lessons for Australia from overseas digital platforms competition regimes, developing trends in online marketplaces, and competition issues in cloud computing and generative AI.  

It also highlights the extraordinary growth in digital platform services with:

• 99% of adults using connected devices
• 94% of people over fourteen years of age own a smartphone and
• Almost 40% of Australians wear a device connected to the internet.

New digital competition regime and mandatory service-specific codes

Digital platforms are a concern for the ACCC because of their capacity to control access to digital markets for consumers, developers, and small businesses.  This control can lead to competition and consumer harms, such as  increased price, reduced quality and choice, and restricted access to inputs and markets.

The ACCC has observed conduct by powerful digital platforms that distorts competition. Key issues include denial of interoperability and impeding switching, self-preferencing and tying, restricting access to key inputs, and exclusivity agreements.

Examining the regulatory frameworks implemented in the European Union, United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan targeting digital markets, the ACCC has reiterated the need for a new digital competition regime in Australia.  This regime would address the slow pace of enforcement action against anti-competitive conduct in digital platform markets, the difficulty addressing continuing competitive harms, and the limited remedies available under existing competition laws.

The new digital competition regime proposed by the Australian Government in December 2024 would designate certain digital platforms with a critical position in the Australian economy – beginning with app marketplaces and ad tech services.  The platforms would subject to a range of broad and service-specific obligations targeting anti-competitive conduct, enforceable by the ACCC.

The ACCC also reiterated its support for the introduction of mandatory service-specific codes of conduct. The codes would require designated digital platforms to comply with obligations targeting anti-competitive self-preferencing and tying, exclusive pre-installation, impediments to switching and interoperability, exclusivity, and other anti-competitive behaviours.

Tackling unfair trading practices in digital markets

With the growth in digital platform services comes significant risk of increased competition and consumer harms, which undermine confidence and trust necessary for a well-functioning marketplace.  These issues include:

• Undisclosed “influencer” sponsorships
• Exploitative marketing and sales strategies, particularly those using consumer data, including subscription traps, drip pricing, and hidden fees
• Interface design strategies that impede consumer choice
• The use of AI-generated outputs to shape consumer behaviours and prevent informed decision-making
• Business practices designed to limit, discourage, or prevent the exercise of consumer rights and making it difficult for consumers to cancel services or to obtain remedies
• Various unfair contracting practices designed to have consumers agree to unfavourable contract terms.

The existing consumer protection laws are not considered adequate to fully address these harms, and the ACCC has again pressed for the introduction of an economy wide unfair trading practices prohibition.

Additionally, the ACCC has reiterated the need for mandatory minimum internal dispute resolution standards and an independent external dispute resolution body to address consumer and small business complaints relating to digital platform services, a suggestion that has strong support from Australian consumers. Existing dispute resolution processes on digital platforms are widely seen as inadequate, leaving to obvious consumer harms.

Emerging competition issues: cloud computing and generative AI

The report recognises the dynamic nature of digital platform services and, in that context, the need for continued scrutiny and monitoring of emerging technologies and their effects in other markets. The report focuses particularly on emerging competition issues arising from cloud computing and generative artificial intelligence.

Competition risks from cloud computing include:

• Significant barriers to entry and expansion within the cloud computing infrastructure market, given the significant upfront investment costs, the economies of scale and scope of the large incumbent cloud providers, and network effects from those providers existing software and hardware products.
• Barriers to switching and interoperability between cloud infrastructure services providers, including high egress fees, including the effect of those barriers on new providers in the market.
• Concentration of cloud computing services in existing large digital platforms that are vertically integrated across the cloud stack, with the risk of potentially anti-competitive bundling and tying of services. Where cloud providers also offer generative AI products and services, there is a related risk of them bundling, tying, or self-preferencing their own products over those of competitors.
• Information asymmetries between cloud computing service providers and customers.

The potential competitive harms include increased costs to consumers and businesses and reduced innovation in generative AI technologies.

These issues give rise to two further recommendations made in the Final Report.

First, the ACCC proposes that be empowered and resourced to continue to have a monitoring function for emerging digital technologies under the proposed digital competition regime. This is intended to allow for new enforcement proposals and to inform the development and amendment of the service-specific codes. 

Secondly, the ACCC proposes that the Australian Government priorities a whole-of-government approach to digital platform regulation.  Since March 2023, the ACCC, the OAIC, the ACMA and the eSafety Commissioner have formed the Digital Platform Regulators Forum (DP-Reg), and the Report recommends that this be recognised as a permanent forum with adequate resources to continue to undertake information-sharing and collaboration between these regulators. These proposals are intended to ensure that digital markets are regulated in a streamlined, collaborative, holistic, and consistent way.

Find out more

Readers interested in the full report will find it published on the ACCC’s website here and the ACCC’s summary of the key findings from the final report here.