European Union regulators opened an in-depth investigation Tuesday into U.S. tech giant Google’s plan to buy fitness tracking device maker Fitbit. The EU said the deal could expand Google’s “data advantage” and therefore raise barriers for rivals to match Google’s online advertising services. In an effort to allay the apprehension, Google offered to put all information collected from wearable devices into a virtual data silo. But the overture wasn’t enough to satisfy the European Commission, which said the proposal wouldn’t cover all the data Google could access as a result of the acquisition. “This deal is about devices, not data,” said Rick Osterloh, Google’s senior vice president for devices and services.

Source: The Standard August 04, 2020 15:25 UTC