A Very Large Everything

A sub-series within Big Tech's War on Users Brussels designated ChatGPT as a Very Large Online Search Engine today, alongside Reddit and Roblox as Very Large Online Platforms, under the Digital Services Act. First time an AI chatbot has ever gotten the search-engine label. I read that twice too, for a different reason than usual — not because it's surprising regulators are circling, but because of how they got there. The Commission's logic: ChatGPT is a "hybrid service" that counts as a search engine because it can pull live results from the internet to answer your prompt. Not because it looks like Google. Because it functions like Google, whether OpenAI wants to wear that label or not. Reddit and Roblox got the platform tag because they let users create and share content publicly — the same bucket that already holds Facebook, TikTok, and Amazon. All three now have until the end of November to start complying, and by end of Q4 to be fully compliant with the whole suite — annual…