Deals & Moves

Facebook agreed on February 19, 2014 to acquire WhatsApp in a deal valued at about $19 billion, completing it in October 2014.

The European Commission fined Apple €500 million and Meta €200 million for breaching the Digital Markets Act, the first fines under the law.

Disney’s acquisition of most of 21st Century Fox, announced in December 2017, became effective on March 20, 2019, in a deal valued at about $71 billion.

The Belgian Market Court ruled in the long-running case over IAB Europe’s Transparency & Consent Framework, rejecting the data protection authority’s view that IAB Europe is a joint controller with TCF participants.

Amazon announced in May 2021 and completed on March 17, 2022 its $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM, adding thousands of films and TV shows to Prime Video.

Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google would not have to divest Chrome or Android but could no longer include search in exclusive contracts and must share some search data with rivals.

In the remedies phase of the ad tech case, Judge Brinkema declined to order Google to divest its AdX exchange, imposing other remedies instead.

Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled that Google illegally monopolized the markets for publisher ad servers and ad exchanges for open-web display advertising, a landmark win for the Justice Department and 17 states.

TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC was established on January 22, 2026 to oversee TikTok’s US operations, in compliance with a September 2025 executive order under the law requiring divestiture of TikTok’s US business.

Skydance Media and Paramount Global completed their roughly $8.4 billion merger on August 7, 2025, forming Paramount Skydance.

Google announced it would retire most Privacy Sandbox technologies, including Topics and Protected Audience on Chrome and Android, citing low adoption and ecosystem feedback.

Google said it would not roll out a standalone choice prompt for third-party cookies in Chrome and would keep supporting them, ending its plan to phase them out.

Facebook agreed on April 9, 2012 to acquire the photo-sharing app Instagram for about $1 billion in cash and stock, its largest acquisition at the time.

Judge James Boasberg ruled that the FTC had failed to prove Meta currently holds a monopoly in personal social networking, rejecting the agency’s bid to force Meta to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp.

The European Commission fined Google €2.95 billion for breaching EU antitrust rules by distorting competition in advertising technology, concluding a long-running probe.

Reporting in March 2018 revealed that Cambridge Analytica had harvested data from millions of Facebook users. The scandal led to a record $5 billion FTC privacy penalty against Facebook in July 2019.

From April 26, 2021, with iOS 14.5, Apple required apps to use its App Tracking Transparency framework and ask users for permission before tracking them across other companies’ apps and websites, reshaping mobile advertising.