Last week, European authorities launched investigations into the advertising practices of Facebook and Google in a move that could significantly affect the future business models of the tech giants. “The European Commission has opened a formal antitrust investigation to assess whether Facebook violated EU (European Union) competition rules by using advertising data gathered in particular from advertisers in order to compete with them in markets where Facebook is active such as classified ads,” said the EU in a statement. The EU said findings of a preliminary investigation raised concern that Facebook may distort competition for online classified ads using data obtained from competing providers on the social network, which then helps boost the platform’s own classified ads service Facebook Marketplace. In addition to the probe launched on Google last week, FCO is currently following up on similar proceedings against Facebook and Amazon launched earlier this year. Google launched Google News Showcase last year as a licensing partnership with select publishers around the world in what the company termed a helping hand to help journalism thrive in the digital age.

Source: Standard Digital June 07, 2021 21:00 UTC