After Google, Meta Also Suffers EU Antitrust Setback

Meta Platforms Inc’s META Facebook suffered a setback in its European Union court challenge of a German antitrust decision that demanded an overhaul of the social media giant’s business model.
Competition authorities are probing Meta over alleged abuses of a dominant position are justified in considering other rules, like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, an adviser to the bloc’s top court said in a non-binding opinion, Bloomberg reported.
The non-binding opinion, if followed by the Court of the Justice of the Europe Union (CJEU), could encourage the German enforcer and its peers in other EU countries to broaden their scrutiny of Big Tech based on privacy rules.
Meta’s battle with the German cartel office began in 2019 after the latter blamed the company for abusing its market power by collecting users’ data without their consent and ordered it to stop. Meta challenged the finding.
Meta is also in the German watchdog’s crosshairs to link its Oculus virtual reality products with the social network and platform.
The EU’s GDPR gave data watchdogs unprecedented fining powers and made those authorities, where a firm has its EU base, the principal supervisor over them.
Recently, Alphabet Inc’s GOOGL GOOG Google suffered its second setback in Europe in less than a year as the EU’s top court agreed with the bloc’s antitrust regulators against a landmark 4.3 billion euro ($4.3 billion) fine on the tech giant for abusing its influence.
Price Action: META shares traded lower by 0.69% at $147 in the premarket on the last check Tuesday.
Photo by succo from Pixabay

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