Google sides with Facebook in data dominance probe

Paris

GOOGLE is siding with Facebook Inc amid a brewing antitrust clash over how the social network giant may have abused its power to leverage customer data.

Fabien Curto Millet, an economist at Google, told a Paris conference that it's wrong to meld data privacy with antitrust issues. Earlier, the head of France's competition authority said he preferred a less confrontational approach than his German counterparts had taken on the issue.

"We shouldn't mix things up" and should instead reinforce specific regulators rather than putting competition officials in charge, Mr Millet said. "The protection of data privacy is part of the good results produced by good competition," but "it…