- Google, press: US antitrust investigation widens
- Amnesty: Google and Facebook threaten human rights
- Google, 50 US states open antitrust investigation
- Google to pay a fine of $ 200 million
- France approves the law to tax web giants: Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon
- Antitrust: preliminary investigation on Google for alleged abuse of a dominant position. The answer: we will cooperate
Share
02 December 2019The European Commission has sent preliminary investigations to verify whether the data collection practices of Google and Facebook respect the rules of competition as established by the European Union. This was declared by a spokesman for the EU Commission. The Antitrust Authority, headed by Margrethe Vestager, has sent "questionnaires as part of a preliminary investigation into the data practices of Google and Facebook. These surveys concern the way in which data is collected, used and monetized, including for advertising purposes "Preliminary investigations are underway," the spokesman concluded. Respondents have the deadline of 7 January to send their communications.Protect the competition
Through the investigation, the European Commission intends to investigate the implications on the competition of technology giants that collect huge amounts of data. Or how their business could undermine competitors' ability to compete fairly or access online markets. The European survey comes less than a year after the 1.7 billion dollar fine imposed by the European Commission on Google last March. According to the Antitrust Authority, Google "abused its dominant position by imposing a number of restrictive clauses in its contracts with third-party websites, preventing competitors from placing their contextual advertising on these sites". In July, EU regulators launched an investigation to establish whether Amazon's use of data by independent vendors violates competition rules.
The reply
"We use the data to make our services more useful and to show relevant advertising and offer people the controls to manage, delete or transfer their data," a Google spokesman said in a statement. For the moment, however, the technological giant founded by Mark Zuckerberg has not issued statements in this regard.
In the USA
The investigation comes as Google, Facebook and the other Silicon Valley giants are subjected to greater control by government officials and regulators even in the US. In fact, this summer the US Department of Justice has launched a wide-ranging antitrust investigation of the major Silicon Valley players including Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. In August, Alphabet, Google's parent company, received a mandatory request for information. Meanwhile, the US Federal Trade Commission has fined Facebook for $ 5 billion to close an investigation by US authorities into its privacy practices. This is the largest financial sanction ever imposed by the regulator.