Financial Times

The European Commission is for the first time preparing to regulate how search engines such as Google operate, under draft proposals designed to bolster the rights of businesses and app makers that rely on big internet giants to sell their services. The European Commission has expanded its plans to regulate the relationship online platforms such as Amazon and Apple have with vendors to also include the practices of search engines such as Google. Under the plans, the tech platforms would be required to provide companies with more information about how their ranking algorithms work.

Ofcom has launched an investigation into whether Three and Vodafone, the UK telecoms operators, are “throttling” certain services on their networks in contravention of European Union rules on net neutrality. The investigation could have a profound impact on how telecoms groups across Europe manage traffic, and whether they continue to offer customers unlimited access to certain types of content — such as social media apps or music streaming services — on top of normal data usage restrictions.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai pledged to clamp down on any unfair behaviour by US broadband companies following the scrapping of net neutrality rules, saying “fear mongering” about the internet will gradually fade. "Some of the headlines that, quote, this is the end of internet as we know it have been proven completely wrong.

The Trump administration's approach to a fair and open internet seeks a compromise between too much regulation and too little, said Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai. "Some people said that we should maintain the rules we had, the heavy-handed regulations that were based in the 1930s," he said. "Others said we should wipe the slate clean, have no regulations whatsoever. We charted a middle course."  Chairman Pai said that he's looking to counter the "misinformation" that's produced this is the "'end of the internet as we know it'" type headlines.

Facebook has won the backing of European Union courts after the European Court of Justice dismissed a potential class action lawsuit from Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems.  The EU’s highest court ruled that Schrems — a dogged campaigner against Facebook’s handling of users’ personal data — could not bring a consumer lawsuit on behalf of 25,000 Facebook users for alleged privacy breaches. Instead, the ECJ said Schrems could only file an individual case against Facebook for allegedly illegally handling data relating to his personal Facebook account in Austria.

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority decided that Rupert Murdoch’s £11.7 billion bid to take full control of Sky would concentrate too much power in the media mogul’s hands, giving the Murdoch family “too much control over news providers across all media platforms, and therefore too much influence over public opinion and the political agenda”.  Walt Disney will have to decide whether to take full control of Sky when it completes its proposed $66 billion takeover of the entertainment assets owned by Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox group.