The intense regulatory focus on Big Tech giants in Europe has not eased.
Earlier this week, hundreds of German publishers were the latest to push back on Google’s proposed Chrome Privacy Sandbox plan by lodging a complaint against the initiative at the European Commission, per the Financial Times.
Related: Google’s Proposed Chrome Privacy Sandbox Delayed Until 2023
The initiative is aimed at removing third-party cookies and other functions from the Chrome browser and, according to the internet giant, will result in the replacement of tracking infrastructure with web technologies that protect user’s privacy online while also allowing advertisers to continue their tracking.
But the German group, which also includes advertisers and high-ranking media entities, argues that the planned changes will not only breach EU competition law, but will have a negative impact on their businesses.
Similar complaints have been filed to the U.K.’s Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA), since 2020, which has led the competition watchdog to engage in a series of consultations with Google to address the concerns.
Also related: UK Regulators To Probe Google Chrome Changes Over Antitrust Fears
And so far, the regulatory attention has been successful in putting pressure on the internet giant to slow down. In June last year, Chrome’s Privacy Engineering Director Vinay Goel said in a blog post that the project will be delayed until mid-2023, a year later than originally planned.
Read more: EU Conditionally Approves Facebook Parent’s Buy of Kustomer
On the upside, the chief regulator of the EU has approved Meta Platforms’ acquisition of customer service startup Kustomer, in a deal that values Kustomer at over $1 billion as of November 2020.
As PYMNTS reported, the EU approval concludes a long-running saga that was fraught with various regulatory challenges both in the U.S. and abroad, and has Meta, formerly known as Facebook, agreeing to a 10-year commitment to offer nondiscriminatory access to its public APIs for messaging channels.
According to the EC, even though Kustomer is not a large company, it was still “important” to carefully look into transactions that could “further strengthen large players that increasingly dominate the digital economy, irrespective of the target company’s size.”
“Our decision today will ensure that innovative rivals and new entrants in the customer relationship management software market can effectively compete,” the EC’s Margrethe Vestager said.
Learn more: EU’s Plan to Protect Internet Privacy: Adopt Apple’s Solution
Meanwhile, Apple seeded the first beta of iOS 15.4 for developers on Thursday (Jan 27) with a new feature that will allow users to add a EU Digital COVID Certificate to the Health and Wallet apps by scanning the certificate’s QR code, according to media reports.
And aside from a person’s name and the type of vaccine received, vaccine cards will also show the issuer and the date each dose was administered as well as a digitally signed QR code.
See also: Apple Makes New Moves to Turn iPhones into Payment Terminals
The Cupertino giant has also made new moves to turn iPhones into payment terminals, PYMNTS reported this week, per Bloomberg.
The new feature is expected to leverage the iPhones’ near field communications (NFC) chip used for Apple Pay and has been in development since 2020 with Apple’s $100 million acquisition of Canadian contactless payments startup Mobeewave.
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