Alex Webb

A Billionaire Makes an Opportunistic French Telecoms Bid

The billionaire Patrick Drahi built his transatlantic telecoms empire on a mountain of debt that at times imperiled its survival. That hasn’t dispelled his appetite for more. On Friday, Drahi made a 2.5 billion-euro ($3 billion) offer to acquire the roughly 47% of Altice Europe NV that he doesn…

Another Internet Border Has Just Gone Up

The balkanization of the internet continues. The European Union’s top court called a halt on Thursday to the main way companies transfer data across the Atlantic. The Privacy Shield, as it is known, allows for data from Europe to remain subject to the region’s data privacy laws when shifted to…

Do You Really Want Google to Have Your Personal Fitness Data?

If you’re concerned about the pervasive role in daily life of technology companies such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google, then its planned $2.1 billion acquisition of Fitbit Inc. is a worry. Google already owns the biggest search engine, the most popular video-streaming site (YouTube), the biggest…

Why Google Might Prefer Dropping a $22 Billion Business

For Google, a partial voluntary breakup of its advertising business might be preferable to whatever regulators come up with on their own. Whenever people rattle off big tech deals whose regulatory approval was, in hindsight, a mistake, they tend to include the Alphabet Inc. unit’s $3.2 billion…

Can Germany Really Afford to Ban Huawei?

Germany wants a rapid roll-out of 5G technology to sort out its creaking mobile phone network. Yet a group of German lawmakers wants to ban equipment made by China’s Huawei Technologies Co. The country can’t do both. There is an inevitable trade-off for any nation considering a block on Huawei’s…

Why Is Zuckerberg So Relaxed About UK Online Speech Rules?

Britain’s plans to regulate online content have triggered an unsurprising furor about censorship. But that’s largely fine with the technology giants – because it distracts attention from a bigger problem that goes to the heart of their business model. The white paper on online harms, published…

What Microsoft Can Teach Facebook About Playing Nice

As another European Commission mega-fine on Alphabet Inc. nears, it prompts the question: can the Google parent ever free itself from the specter of penalties from the region’s regulators? The same goes for Amazon.com Inc. and Facebook Inc., each of which is facing scrutiny for how they handle data…

UK’s Tech Tax Is Both Pointless and Essential

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond has, unexpectedly, forged ahead with plans to introduce a tax on the world’s biggest tech firms. Call it political grandstanding (it is). Call the proceeds insubstantial (they will be). But the levy, announced in Monday’s budget, will be an…

Will Nick Clegg Succeed in his Mission?

The two most catastrophic stops on Facebook Inc.'s tour of apology around the world's legislatures were, without doubt, CEO Mark Zuckerberg's appearance in Brussels and Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer's performance in London. It was clear from these outings at the European Parliament…

Things Are Finally Looking Up for Chipmakers

When you're trying to work out what's going to happen next year in the semiconductor industry, there are worse places to look than ASML Holdings NV. The Dutch firm supplies photolithography machines to the likes of Intel Corp., Samsung Electronics Corp. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing…