“We try to prepare ourselves to make sure we have the right set of glasses to make sure we can see what is going on when it comes to data,” Vestager told the Guardian. In a recent interview Vestager said it was tricky to find an alternative metric to turnover, for assets, such as knowledge, patents or data.
Consumer organisations are pressing for Brussels to take account of the number of consumers affected by a merger to assess whether it would create a monopoly. The commission assess mergers using the metric of turnover, which critics say fails to capture the potential of a tech startup with zero revenues, but big potential.
The last big revision of EU merger rules was in 2004, the year Mark Zuckerberg launched ‘The Facebook’ at Harvard University, when WhatsApp founders were still working at the then internet powerhouse Yahoo. Speaking ahead of the announcement, Vestager said she was closely watching the outcome of investigations by the German authorities and others, while noting that “in our legislation you can be dominant without necessarily breaking any rules”.ĮU officials are assessing whether competition rules need to be updated to reflect the power of data-rich companies. Investigations are also under way in Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain.Ī French data watchdog fined Facebook €150,000 on Tuesday for failing to prevent users’ data being accessed by advertisers. The German cartel office is investigating whether Facebook is abusing its dominant position by failing to inform people about how their personal data is being used. The European commission stressed the latest fine was unrelated to national antitrust inquiries.
“The commission failed to do so when it gave the go-ahead to the Facebook-WhatsApp takeover.” “It is crucial in our data economy that competition bodies more closely scrutinise the potential consumer harm of a merger between data-heavy companies,” said the BEUC director general, Monique Goyens. The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) said it was disappointing that the commission had not revised its original decision in favour of the merger.
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The commission must be able to take decisions about mergers’ effects on competition in full knowledge of accurate facts.” “It imposes a proportionate and deterrent fine on Facebook. “Today’s decision sends a clear signal to companies that they must comply with all aspects of EU merger rules, including the obligation to provide correct information,’” said the EU competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager. The decision to allow the Facebook-WhatsApp merger is unaffected by the latest announcement, the commission said. But the commission said it had taken into account the company’s cooperation during the inquiry. The fine could have been more than twice the size, as competition authorities are able to fine rule-breaking companies 1% of annual turnover, which for Facebook was $276m (£211m) in 2016. “Today’s announcement brings this matter to a close,” Facebook said. In a statement Facebook said the errors were not intentional and noted that the commission confirmed these submissions had not changed the outcome of the merger inquiry. The commission found that Facebook staff knew in 2014 that it was technically possible to link WhatsApp phone numbers with Facebook users’ identities, contrary to their public statements about the merger.
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