“Apple’s takeover of the music-recognizing service Shazam has hit a possible snag in the European Union, after the bloc’s competition authorities said they want to take a closer look,” David Meyer reports for Fortune. “It’s not entirely clear what the problem is, but Austria — the EU country where Apple submitted a notification for regulatory clearance — wants the Commission to take over the case, as do France, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Spain, and Sweden.”
“The reportedly-$400 million deal is too small to automatically trigger a Commission probe. Last year Shazam posted revenues of just £40.3 million ($56 million), which brings it in well below the Commission’s thresholds for automatic review (€100 million or more, depending on the circumstances),” Meyer reports. “However, the rules say countries can nonetheless ask the Commission to wade in, and that’s what’s happened here.”
Meyer reports, “Some observers have highlighted Shazam’s rich trove of user data, and the fact that the Commission is increasingly keen on treating data as an asset when looking at the merits and competition risks of mergers.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Ah, the languid expediency of unnecessary red tape unfurled by meddlesome bureaucrats.
SEE ALSO:
Why Apple bought Shazam – December 13, 2017
Apple’s $400 million purchase of Shazam: Good news or bad news for startups? – December 12, 2017
Shazam! Apple’s Siri gets better – December 11, 2017
Apple could be missing out on the smart home if they take too much longer to get things right – December 11, 2017
Why is Apple buying Shazam? – December 11, 2017
Apple said to acquire music recognition service Shazam – December 8, 2017
The EU is The Fourth Reich.
OK, so what’s the US then?
a sovereign Constitutional republic.
Given the amount of corruption and ineptitude that Trump has introduced into the American system combined with his disregard for our long term allies, your comments are baseless, botty. Trump and the GOP are currently crapping all over the Constitution and critical processes with wild abandon. We will all by forced to pay for that idiocy.
Yep, the USA is the republic that established NATO, hosts the United Nations, the WTO, and until the current administration promoted multilateral world trade agreements to enable its companies to flourish under a common set of international rules.
botvinnik talks like an arrogant fool who thinks America standing alone is undefeatable.
Europe, despite occasional nationalist outbursts, remembers WW2 and knows very well that no nation today has a chance to succeed if it goes it alone. International cooperation is the only way to maintain peace and economic well being for everyone. They also know that they need both trade and local economic development. That is why, despite plenty of bickering, they are maintaining the world’s foremost international trading bloc. For unknown reasons, despite taking the vast majority of benefits from world trade for 60 years, people like botvinnik in the USA think that isolation is good and European policy, which is derived directly from postwar collaboration with the USA, must now be a bad thing. Botvinnik uses no economic dato or analysis of any kind to justify his hogwash.
It would do you well to determine your place in the world going forward, as debt swamps the USA from its pedestal as economic superpower and thereafter inevitably losing sole superpower status as well. Of course since the nuclear era, superpower status is a hollow shell anyway.
There are basically only three likely peaceful outcomes for the future:
1) The USA and Europe tighten ties to act as a counterweight to communist IP thief China
2) the USA collaborates with the rest of the Americas, and Europe continues its slow march to the United States of Europe, to create a tripolar economic world with china as the third power. This is probably only a transitional state because China will not be stopped by divided opponents.
3) the USA turns isolationist and paranoid, and cedes its long term economic future to nations that encourage trade and labor migration to where economic activity is welcome for all, both native born and naturalized citizens. If this is the case, it is unclear that Europe has the size and resources to counter China for long, resulting in a China dominated world in a century or two.
And then of course there are all the other future options that involve war. One wouldn’t have expected this to be a likely scenario but the USA has chosen to remain engaged in a 17 year war, many decades of dangerous debt digging, and now is ignoring education deficits and its role causing serious environmental issues of desertification, climate change, resource limitations, and pollution emissions. Future resource wars could get interesting. One wonders how long American taxpayers can afford to park its military around Iraqi and Nigerian oil pipelines.
That is a lovely well thought out post there, thank you.
uh, so where is that 2% NATO obligation you hosers owe? Tell Prime Menstrual Trudy to man-…er, person-up and quit being a deadbeat.
Quite clearly, Botty is an un-American, unpatriotic, uneducated sociopath, a living travesty of provincial delusion.
I wonder if he has ever ventured beyond his backwoods xenophobic safe space?
He certainly doesn’t speak for any of my American relations and friends. I have not met his equal on any of my frequent visits, not even the angriest cab driver comes close.
well, since most of the “angriest cab drivers” are muslim transplants, probably not.
ungotcha.
The EU…….. THE GLOBAL MEGA SWAMP.
Absolute CORRUPTION on a global scale.
SCUMBAGS of the world.
Not a fan of the EU on some things, but they have been good on privacy rights.
The EU a supporter of Apple gadgets and it does not start illegal wars. So much for wringing your hands over EU corruption.
I for one would prefer it independant.