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Facebook misled us with WhatsApp takeover: EU

By
Reuters
Published Dec. 20, 2016
Updated Dec. 21, 2016, 12:14 p.m. ET

The European Commission has charged Facebook with providing misleading information during its takeover of the online messaging service WhatsApp, opening the company to a possible fine of 1 percent of its revenue.

The statement of objections sent to Facebook will not have an impact on the approval of the $22 billion merger in 2014, the commission said in a statement Tuesday.

Facebook becomes the latest Silicon Valley target of EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, who has demanded Apple pay back $14 billion in taxes to Ireland and hit Google with two market abuse investigations.

The issue regards a WhatsApp privacy policy change in August, when it said it would share some users’ phone numbers with parent company Facebook, triggering investigations by a number of EU data protection authorities.

The commission said Facebook had indicated in its notification of the planned acquisition that it would be unable reliably to match the two companies’ user accounts.

“In today’s Statement of Objections, the Commission takes the preliminary view that, contrary to Facebook’s statements and reply during the merger review, the technical possibility of automatically matching Facebook users’ IDs with WhatsApp users’ IDs already existed in 2014,” it said.

“The Commission’s preliminary view is that Facebook gave us incorrect or misleading information during the investigation into its acquisition of WhatsApp,” said Vestager, the EU’s competition commissioner.

Facebook has until Jan. 31 to respond.

“We respect the Commission’s process and are confident that a full review of the facts will confirm Facebook has acted in good faith,” a Facebook spokeswoman said.

“We’ve consistently provided accurate information about our technical capabilities and plans, including in submissions about the WhatsApp acquisition and in voluntary briefings before WhatsApp’s privacy policy update this year,” she added.

The Menlo Park, Calif., company will continue to cooperate and give the information officials need to resolve their questions, she said.

In response to separate concerns from EU data protection watchdogs, Facebook has agreed to stop sharing WhatsApp users’ information with Facebook for the purposes of improving Facebook products and advertising experiences.

The watchdogs wrote to the company last week asking for more information about the privacy policy change.