These were the 10 biggest European tech stories this week
Robin Wauters
On a mission to boost the competitiveness of the European technology, startup and investment ecosystem(s), and help the Belgian tech ecosystem reach the next level while at it.
This week, Tech.eu tracked 14 technology M&A transactions and 57 funding deals (totalling €260 million) in Europe, Turkey 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 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) The EU announced on Thursday a new round of antitrust charges against Google — the third set since early 2015 — claiming that some of the company’s advertising products had restricted consumer choice.
2) Microsoft has won a court appeal to prevent it from handing over email data located on Irish servers to US authorities.
3) Microsoft also confirmed last Monday that it will close its Finnish mobile phone unit and cut up to 1,350 jobs in the Nordic country.
4) German chipmaker Infineon Technologies has agreed to buy Wolfspeed Power and RF for $850 million from US company Cree, betting on new energy efficient chips it expects will dominate the market in the next decade.
5) Uber had a rough week in Europe – drivers in Denmark were fined, and it’s been forced to pull out of Hungary after the introduction of tough new laws by prime minister Viktor Orban.
6) Some of the leading fintech companies in Europe have joined forces to launch the European Fintech Alliance (EFA) in Berlin.
7) Cloud9 IDE, an Amsterdam/San Francisco-based startup that offers a cloud-based integrated development environment (IDE) in which developers can quickly start building applications and collaborate with others, has been acquired by Amazon Web Services.
8) Germany has launched a support programme for automated and connected driving, making available up to €80 million for research projects until 2020. In related news, Germany’s electric car discount scheme has greatly spurred new BMW i3 sales.
9) Opera Software on Friday said it will communicate by early Monday whether all the conditions of a $1.24 billion takeover bid by a Chinese consortium have been met.
10) Investment firm Marlin Equity Partners has closed €325 million for its first dedicated fund in Europe.
Bonus link: Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web, has pleaded with EU regulators to sew up the loopholes in the bloc’s new net neutrality rules, which aim to maintain a level playing field on the Internet.