These were the 10 biggest European tech stories this week

From Tech.eu:

Happy Friday! This week, Tech.eu tracked 17 technology M&A transactions and 69 funding deals (totalling €286 million) in Europe and Israel.

Like every week, we listed every single one of them in our free weekly newsletter, along with interesting news regarding fledgling European startups, tech investors old and new, a number of good reads published elsewhere, government and policy news, as well as an overview of interesting lists, facts and figures from a wide variety of sources.

You can subscribe to our newsletter below to receive all this information in your inbox every Friday afternoon for free, but here’s an overview of the 10 biggest European tech news items for this week:

1) Chinese Internet juggernaut Alibaba has acquired a controlling stake in Rocket Internet’s e-commerce platform Lazada for about $1 billion

2) Speaking of Rocket Internet, the company says it is making progress to limit losses after reporting a loss of €197.8 million euros (but revenue increases) for last year

3) Vente-privee took another step toward expanding its European reach when it announced the acquisition of Spanish e-commerce site Privalia for around €500 million

4) After Daimler confirmed talks with Amazon and Microsoft about an investment in digital mapping company HERE, Bosch is considering buying a stake, too

5) The pan-European data regulator group, Article 29, has criticised the Privacy Shield safe harbour revamp proposed by the European commission over its lack of surveillance protection from the US government for EU citizens’ data

6) VC firm Accel’s London office (which is the global investment company’s base for all investments in Europe and Israel) has secured $500 million for its fifth fund

7) Dutch food delivery firm Takeaway.com is considering an IPO that could value the company at more than €1 billion, Bloomberg reported

8) Britain’s Daily Mail is in talks with potential partners to mount a joint bid for Yahoo’s Internet assets

9) Spotify’s founders have written an open letter to Sweden’s politicians, saying they’ll be forced to divert thousands of jobs away from Sweden if major changes to the country’s housing, taxation, and education systems aren’t made

10) Nexthink, the Swiss provider of end-user IT analytics, has secured $40 million in new investment in a round led by Highland Europe as it preps for an IPO and establishes a US base in Boston

Bonus link: Russian billionaire investor Yuri Milner and physicist Stephen Hawking announced a $100 million initiative to better understand the cosmos, this time by deploying thousands of tiny spacecraft to travel to our nearest neighboring star system (Alpha Centauri) and send back pictures