UK’s antitrust watchdog orders Facebook to sell Giphy

In a significant push against big tech’s ability to maintain market dominance through sheer buying power, the UK’s competition watchdog has ordered Facebook (now Meta) to reverse its acquisition of animated GIF platform, Giphy — confirming the Financial Times‘ earlier reporting. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said its phase 2 investigation cemented its earlier […]

Paris asks scooter sharing services to restrict speed to 10km/h

Riding a scooter in Paris will soon feel incredibly… slow. The City of Paris has announced that scooter sharing services should restrict the maximum top speed to 10km/h (that’s 6.2mph). That decision comes following a number of pedestrian injuries that involved a scooter. Paris has been an important market for scooter sharing companies. It’s a […]

Italy fines Apple and Google for ‘aggressive’ data practices

Apple and Google have been fined €10 million apiece by Italy’s competition and market authority (AGCM) which has found they did not provide their users with clear enough information on commercial uses of their data — in violation of the country’s consumer code. The regulator also accuses the pair of deploying “aggressive” practices to push […]

Europe offers tepid set of political ads transparency rules

It’s been almost a year since the EU’s executive announced it would propose rules for political ads transparency in response to concern about online microtargeting and big data techniques making mincemeat of democratic integrity and accountability. Today it’s come out with its proposal. But frankly it doesn’t look like the wait was worth it. The […]

Uber to shutter most of its service in Belgium tomorrow after court ruling

Uber will halt its ride-hailing service in most of Belgium tomorrow following a court ruling Wednesday that extends a 2015 order banning its p2p UberPop service to also cover professional drivers providing its ride-hailing service. Uber told us that it is studying the detail of the ruling to decide whether to appeal the decision with […]