Facebook’s Kustomer deal may hurt competition, EU regulators say

The EU executive, which acts as the bloc's competition enforcer, said the deal may result in Facebook blocking rivals’ access to its units WhatsApp, Messenger or Instagram, which are key to customer relationship management software.

Facebook’s acquisition of U.S. customer service startup Kustomer may hurt competition and boost its market power in online advertising, European Union antitrust regulators warned on Monday as they opened a full-scale investigation into the deal. (Subscribe to our Today's Cache newsletter for a quick snapshot of top 5 tech stories. Click to subscribe for free.) The move by the European Commission comes amid regulatory concerns on both sides of the Atlantic that a buying spree of startups by big firms, which normally don't trigger competition scrutiny because of the low value of the deal, may be so-called killer acquisitions aimed at closing down nascent rivals.