{"id":1862,"date":"2016-12-23T20:05:47","date_gmt":"2016-12-23T20:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/?p=1862"},"modified":"2016-12-24T15:05:45","modified_gmt":"2016-12-24T15:05:45","slug":"eu-commission-looks-at-facebook-whatsapp-deal-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/eu-commission-looks-at-facebook-whatsapp-deal-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Merry Christmas, WhatsApp users"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>2016 is coming to an end and will leave a wealth of more or less fond memories among the <strong>antitrust community<\/strong>. To quote <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=5HPgP3dnRbI\"><strong>Bob Dylan<\/strong>\u2019s friend Mick<\/a>, we should take care of these, for we cannot relive them. Mind you, that is not necessarily a bad thing in our trade.<\/p>\n<p>Be that as it may, which 2016 memory would we cherish if we were characters in some antitrust remake of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0165078\/\"><strong><em>Wandafuru Raifu<\/em><\/strong><\/a>? Why, probably the <a href=\"http:\/\/europa.eu\/rapid\/press-release_IP-16-4473_en.htm\">statement of objections<\/a> that the European Commission sent <strong>Facebook<\/strong> three days ago. The Commission <a href=\"http:\/\/europa.eu\/rapid\/press-release_IP-14-1088_en.htm\">approved the <strong>WhatsApp<\/strong> takeover<\/a> in 2014, ignoring <a href=\"http:\/\/www.broadband4europe.com\/david-cantor-whatsapp-brussels\/\">massive objections<\/a> raised all over town i.a. by <a href=\"https:\/\/etno.eu\/news\/etno\/2015\/293\">ETNO<\/a>, no less. Now, it claims to have received \u2018<em>incorrect or misleading information<\/em>\u2019 at the time. We dare say that <strong>the Commission was probably the only party actually misled<\/strong>. As it arguably was by the <a href=\"http:\/\/europa.eu\/rapid\/press-release_IP-08-426_en.htm\"><strong>Google<\/strong>\/DoubleClick deal<\/a> six years earlier, cleared ignoring a razor-sharp <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ftc.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/documents\/public_statements\/statement-matter-google\/doubleclick\/071220harbour_0.pdf\">dissenting statement at the FTC<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>We will have to wait and see what the Commission makes of any information it gathers now, for instance in relation to Article 102 TFEU. Right now it has merely bent over backwards to emphasise just how unrelated this new investigation is to its 2014 merger clearance decision.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime\u2026 let us wish everyone a <strong>merry Christmas<\/strong>, a happy New Year and private chats all along.<\/p>\n<div id=\"kpm_content_wrapper\" class=\"notranslate\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2016 is coming to an end and will leave a wealth of more or less fond memories among the antitrust community. To quote Bob Dylan\u2019s friend Mick, we should take [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[861,850,858,10,191,848,857,745,95,73,109,549,443,514,662,880,859,856,860,855,99,74,854,846],"class_list":["post-1862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sin-categoria-en","tag-after-life","tag-bob-dylan","tag-clearance","tag-comision-europea","tag-comision-europea-en","tag-david-cantor","tag-deal","tag-etno","tag-eu-en","tag-eu","tag-european-commission","tag-facebook","tag-fines","tag-google","tag-google-case","tag-hirozu-kareeda","tag-information","tag-merger","tag-open-the-door","tag-statement-of-objections","tag-ue-en","tag-ue","tag-vestager","tag-whatsapp"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1862"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1882,"href":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1862\/revisions\/1882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}