In November 2020 Meta decided to purchase the customer service company called Kustomer and after a long delay, on 15th February 2022, it has been made official that the $1 billion deal has been closed by both parties.
The deal was made by Meta since they wanted to develop and benefit from Kustomer. Kustomer is a small and rapidly growing company that sells its CRM to the customers enabling them to solve their problems and queries. Its purchase would aid Meta to enhance its messaging app in the field of business communication. The deal came to a halt after the UK regulatory authorities set up an investigation based on suspicious activity surrounding this deal. After a long delay Meta closed the deal in 2022. The Commission raises concern about what Meta will do with consumer data. Access to data would be possible only if the user is comfortable with it. Regulatory authorities focused on whether Meta's merger with Customer would reduce the competitive market by raising barriers to entry in the online display advertising platform; whether this merger might harm the competitiveness of customer service tools by reducing their access to its messaging channels.
To address the concerns Meta ensured the Commission that it will provide supplementary access, without causing any interruption to its locally accessible APIs for its online messaging channels to competing customer service software providers and newbies. Meta will also provide an upgraded messaging experience of messenger and WhatsApp. This would also hold for any upcoming features of Meta messaging channels in the future.
In this regard, the European Commission collected sufficient data and feedback from different marketplace competitors and thoroughly investigated this deal with the proper authorities. After much investigation into the matter, the EC concluded that any supplementary data that Meta may have access to and is securing with this deal is for the objective of upgrading its online advertisement display without any malicious intent. So, it will not cause any uncooperative effect on competition between providers of online services as they suspected. So now, UK’s Commission has finally removed suspicion from this deal. The decision made by the commission ensures that innovative competitors and new entrants can compete effectively in the customer relationship software market.
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The deal was made by Meta since they wanted to develop and benefit from Kustomer. Kustomer is a small and rapidly growing company that sells its CRM to the customers enabling them to solve their problems and queries. Its purchase would aid Meta to enhance its messaging app in the field of business communication. The deal came to a halt after the UK regulatory authorities set up an investigation based on suspicious activity surrounding this deal. After a long delay Meta closed the deal in 2022. The Commission raises concern about what Meta will do with consumer data. Access to data would be possible only if the user is comfortable with it. Regulatory authorities focused on whether Meta's merger with Customer would reduce the competitive market by raising barriers to entry in the online display advertising platform; whether this merger might harm the competitiveness of customer service tools by reducing their access to its messaging channels.
To address the concerns Meta ensured the Commission that it will provide supplementary access, without causing any interruption to its locally accessible APIs for its online messaging channels to competing customer service software providers and newbies. Meta will also provide an upgraded messaging experience of messenger and WhatsApp. This would also hold for any upcoming features of Meta messaging channels in the future.
In this regard, the European Commission collected sufficient data and feedback from different marketplace competitors and thoroughly investigated this deal with the proper authorities. After much investigation into the matter, the EC concluded that any supplementary data that Meta may have access to and is securing with this deal is for the objective of upgrading its online advertisement display without any malicious intent. So, it will not cause any uncooperative effect on competition between providers of online services as they suspected. So now, UK’s Commission has finally removed suspicion from this deal. The decision made by the commission ensures that innovative competitors and new entrants can compete effectively in the customer relationship software market.
Read next: After over 15 years, Facebook has officially renamed News Feed to plain "Feed" and while Meta combats inaccurate information in France, a fresh stand-alone tab covering News is launched