This photograph taken on September 28, 2017, shows a smartphone being operated in front of the logos of Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon web giants. Damien Meyer | AFP | Getty Images

Tech companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are stifling competition and innovation and should be subject to new antitrust rules, a new U.K. government report on Wednesday said. The 150-page document, commissioned by Britain's finance minister, said the U.K.'s competition rules "must be updated for the digital age" to increase consumer choice and give users more control over their data. The report stopped short of calling for big tech companies to be broken up, an idea proposed last week by U.S. presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren. "The digital sector has created substantial benefits but these have come at the cost of increasing dominance of a few companies which is limiting competition and consumer choice and innovation," said Jason Furman, former chief economic advisor to ex-President Barack Obama, who chaired the group behind the report.

The panel called for the creation of a new regulator called a "digital markets unit" to implement and enforce pro-competition rules. The unit would force big companies to share users' personal data with competitors, while consumers would be allowed to move their data to a new social network "without losing what they have built up on a platform." The report also recommended establishing a "code of conduct" that would apply to big tech companies. "These pro-competition tools offer a better, more targeted, more pro-business and pro-consumer solution to fostering competition in digital markets than one based upon changing antitrust law to drive breakup or structural separation of dominant businesses," the report said. Regulators around the world are increasingly weighing measures to curb the market power of big tech companies. Last year the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, imposed a record $5 billion antitrust fine on Google for abusing its dominance with Android software on mobile devices. The commission is currently investigating Google for antitrust practices in its advertising business.