(2) At the same time, among those digital services, core platform services feature a number of
characteristics that can be exploited by the undertakings providing them. An example of
such characteristics of core platform services is extreme scale economies, which often
result from nearly zero marginal costs to add business users or end users. Other such
characteristics of core platform services are very strong network effects, an ability to
connect many business users with many end users through the multisidedness of these
services, a significant degree of dependence of both business users and end users, lock-in
effects, a lack of multi-homing for the same purpose by end users, vertical integration, and
data driven-advantages. All these characteristics, combined with unfair practices by
undertakings providing the core platform services, can have the effect of substantially
undermining the contestability of the core platform services, as well as impacting the
fairness of the commercial relationship between undertakings providing such services and
their business users and end users. In practice, this leads to rapid and potentially far-
reaching decreases in business users’ and end users’ choice, and therefore can confer on
the provider of those services the position of a so-called gatekeeper. At the same time, it
should be recognised that services which act in a non-commercial purpose capacity such as
collaborative projects should not be considered as core platform services for the purpose of
this Regulation.
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