‘Facebook presents WhatsApp acquisition to European regulator’

Facebook wants European competition authorities to investigate the planned acquisition of WhatsApp. In this way, the social networking site hopes to prevent the takeover in the EU Member States from being looked at by numerous national supervisors.

That reports The Wall Street Journal citing sources involved in the case. Several EU countries have already been informed of Facebook’s request to the European Commission to conduct an overarching investigation into the takeover. Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of the messaging app has already been approved in the US.

Neither Facebook nor the European competition authorities want to comment on the news from The Wall Street Journal. What is known is that in Europe, telecom companies in particular are concerned about the takeover. They have already lost a lot of turnover due to the greatly reduced SMS traffic and, moreover, they fear Facebook’s too dominant position in the messaging market. In addition, WhatsApp will probably soon come with a VoIP function, with which users can call each other.