European Commission Mergers: Commission approves acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft, subject to conditions

European Commission - PRESS RELEASES - Press release - Mergers: Commission approves acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft, subject to conditions: "The Commission analysed potential data concentration as a result of the merger with regard to its potential impact on competition in the Single Market. Privacy related concerns as such do not fall within the scope of EU competition law but can be taken into account in the competition assessment to the extent that consumers see it as a significant factor of quality, and the merging parties compete with each other on this factor. In this instance, the Commission concluded that data privacy was an important parameter of competition between professional social networks on the market, which could have been negatively affected by the transaction.
 

The proposed commitments

To address the competition concerns identified by the Commission in the professional social network services market, Microsoft offered a series of commitments. These commitments include:

• ensuring that PC manufacturers and distributors would be free not to install LinkedIn on Windows and allowing users to remove LinkedIn from Windows should PC manufacturers and distributors decide to preinstall it. 
• allowing competing professional social network service providers to maintain current levels of interoperability with Microsoft's Office suite of products through the so-called Office add-in program and Office application programming interfaces. 
• granting competing professional social network service providers access to "Microsoft Graph", a gateway for software developers. 

It is used to build applications and services that can, subject to user consent, access data stored in the Microsoft cloud, such as contact information, calendar information, emails, etc. Software developers can potentially use this data to drive subscribers and usage to their professional social networks.

The commitments will apply in the EEA for a period of five years and will be monitored by a trustee." 'via Blog this'