During the 2016 acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft, the EU Commission sought assurances from the parties that they would not marginalise the competitors who offered privacy policies that were friendlier to the consumers than LinkedIn’s.
With this, the Commission had conceded that there was need to fit data protection as part of consumer welfare, more so where mergers are to occur in “markets in which privacy is shown to be an important parameter in the eyes of (a significant number of) consumers”.
