The Federal Cartel Office is placing the Facebook parent company Meta under stricter observation: After a month-long examination, the Bonn authority certified the internet giant as having "outstanding cross-market importance for competition". could do it with the instruments available so far, explained Cartel Office President Andreas Mundt.
Meta thus falls under the extended abuse control by the antitrust authorities.
At the beginning of last year, new regulations in competition law came into force.
A central component is the modernization of abuse control - the supervisory authorities can now intervene earlier in the event of violations by large digital groups and prohibit anti-competitive practices.
On this basis, the authority initiated proceedings against Meta.
The group has created a digital ecosystem with a "very large number of users" and is therefore the "central player in the field of social media," explained Mundt.
In terms of antitrust law, Meta is therefore a company of “outstanding cross-market importance”, which has now been formally proven. The Cartel Office announced that Meta had waived an appeal against this decision.
Five years special supervision
The networks Facebook and Instagram, the messaging service Whatsapp and the technology manufacturer Oculus, with which the group wants to expand its range in the 3D world, are grouped under the umbrella of Meta.
The meta services are used by 3.5 billion people worldwide, and at the same time the group is “the leading provider in the field of social media advertising”, as the antitrust authority explained.
Overall, Meta operates a “strong, advertising-financed ecosystem in the field of social media that is constantly expanding,” the Cartel Office determined.
Meta is now subject to special abuse control for five years.
In January, the Cartel Office had already confirmed that Google's parent company Alphabet had cross-market importance.
Corresponding investigations against the companies Amazon and Apple are still ongoing.