German Antitrust ordered Facebook to stop “combining” data of German users without voluntary consent

Posted on by Federica Romanelli
On February 7, 2019, the Bundeskartellamt, the German antitrust authority, prohibited Facebook from combining data concerning German Facebook users gathered also from third party websites when the user didn’t give voluntary consent to this practice. The decision concerns all private users of Facebook based in Germany. According to the Bundeskartellamt’s decision, until now, individuals have only been able to use Facebook services if they agreed to the terms of service, including Read more [...]

GOOGLE STILL ACCUSED OF HARMING COMPETITION IN THE EU BY UNLAWFULLY PREFERRING ITS ONLINE SHOPPING SERVICES IN SEARCH RESULTS

Posted on by Federica Romanelli
On February 28, 2018, 19 entities signed an open letter addressed to the EU Commissioner for Competition Margarethe Vestager, commenting on the remedy taken by Google after the EU Antitrust’s fine of € 2.42 billion. The amount of the fine took into account the duration and gravity of the infringement and was calculated on the basis of the value of  Google’s European revenues. Google appealed the decision and in the meanwhile, it established Google Shopping as a separate business Read more [...]

Antitrust investigation for Google (in Europe and not only)

Posted on by Federica Romanelli
  On July 14, 2016, the EU Commission sent two Statements of Objections to Google and Alphabet (Google's parent company). With the first Statement, the EU Commission reaffirmed its preliminary conclusion that “Google has abused its dominant position by systematically favouring its comparison shopping service in its search result pages”. With the second Statement, the Commission informed Google of its preliminary view that “the company has abused its dominant position by artificially Read more [...]