Alex Webb

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…