Brussels fines Facebook with 110 million for cheating on WhatsApp

The Commission considers proven that it gave "inaccurate or misleading" information when acquiring the courier company in 2014

  The European Commission has imposed a fine of 110 million euros on Facebook for having provided "inaccurate or misleading" information in 2014 for EU Competition officials to allow them to buy WhatsApp for 19,000 million dollars (around 17,000 million euros) . Then, the European Commissioner was Joaquín Almunia. Now it is Margrethe Vestager, the Danish scourge. Of course, the acquisition process is not in doubt.

On December 21, the community executive announced the opening of a statement of charges against the company Mark Zuckenberg that, in practice, was the first step of a file that could result in a fine of up to 1% of turnover of the company. That's how it has been. According to the estimates that were handled then they spoke of a fork of between 100 and 200 million euros in the worst case. In the end, it was 110.

   "This decision sends companies a clear signal that they must comply with all aspects of the EU merger rules, including the obligation to provide correct information, and imposes a proportional and dissuasive fine on Facebook. to be able to make decisions about the effects of concentrations in the competition with full knowledge of the exact facts, "Vestager stressed in a statement.

24,000 million turnover

What happened? The crux of the statement of charges is limited to August 2016. It was then that what could not happen, happened. In one of its updates of use and its privacy policy, WhatsApp reported the possibility of linking the phone numbers of its customers with their Facebook profiles. The paradox is that in 2014, the owners of the social network swore and perjured that the automatic linking of the clients of both companies was impossible, that they could not do it. And this is what Competition officials do not believe.

This decision generated many criticisms among users, competitors and community organizations. Thus, at the end of October, the data protection agencies of the 28, grouped in the so-called Working Group of Article 29 (GT29), announced the sending of a letter to Jan Koum, CEO and founder of WhatsApp, in the They showed their "serious concern" about what was happening.

Facebook, logically, denies everything and assured in December that it has always acted in "good faith". "We have always provided accurate information about our technical capabilities and our plans," the company said in a statement in which it extends its hand to Brussels and welcomes the fact that the WhatsApp acquisition process is not affected. This is the key. At the end of the day, what is 110 million for Facebook, which accounts for around 27,000 million euros a year?