Alibaba's AliExpress, Amazon's Marketplace, Apple's App Store and 16 other tech companies will be subject to new EU online content rules as of August, EU industry chief Thierry Breton.

The other 16 companies are booking.com, Facebook, Alphabet's Google Maps, Google Play, Google Search, Google Shopping, Instagram, Linkedin, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube, Microsoft's Bing and Zalando.

“We consider these 19 online platforms and search engines have become systematically relevant and have special responsibilities to make the internet safer,” says Breton.

Breton was checking to see whether another four to five companies fall under the DSA, with a decision expected in the next few weeks.

Reuters reported a slight dip in ad sales to $54.55 billion from $54.66 billion a year earlier.

Under the landmark rules known as the Digital Services Act (DSA), the companies, all with more than 45 million monthly active users, are required to do risk management, conduct external and independent auditing, share data with authorities and researchers and adopt a code of conduct.

Besides, Alphabet Inc is planning to buy back $70 billion in stock and posted first-quarter profit and revenue above estimates as demand rose for cloud services and ad sales held up better than expected.

Tech giant Microsoft recorded a nine percent increase in profit to $18.3 billion for the January-March quarter, on the back of a rise in cloud computing sales, bolstering its plans to expand the use of artificial intelligence.

The quarter also marked an ambitious push by Microsoft to capitalize on its investments in artificial intelligence and partnership with San Francisco-based startup OpenAI with the February release of a new AI chatbot feature on its search engine Bing.