Facebook’s fate in terms of its acquisition of US customer service startup Kustomer will be decided by antitrust officials soon, US News reported.
The deal was intended to help scale up the social media company’s WhatsApp, which saw a new spate of usage in the pandemic. It was announced late in 2020.
But with antitrust concerns being paramount these days, EU antitrust regulators want to look more closely at deals with tech, pharma and biotech startups.
They’re looking out for warning signs of “killer acquisitions” in which big companies buy out rivals to squash competition — something Facebook has been accused of before. Austria had asked the EU to take over the review. Now, the Commission can either clear the deal or decide that a four-month investigation would be prudent.
Earlier this year, Facebook hit a market cap of US$1 trillion, with that making it the fifth company — following Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google parent Alphabet — to gain the distinction.
The revenue for Facebook is almost entirely the result of personal ads that Facebook users see when scrolling the popular social media site, along with companies it owns like Instagram.
The company has some new ideas in the pipeline, including a video-calling device and new virtual reality headsets from Oculus, with smart glasses slated to be released later in 2021.
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