Provided by Dow Jones
By Sam Schechner Facebook Inc. and other tech giants are awaiting an Irish ruling that could help determine whether, and how quickly, they have to suspend the flow of data about European Union residents to computer servers in the U.S. In the balance is billions of dollars of business in the cloud-computing, social-media and advertising industries. Ireland s High Court is expected to rule Friday on Facebook s bid to derail a preliminary decision on data flows that it received in August from Ireland s Data Protection Commission, the lead EU privacy regulator for Facebook and other companies that have their European headquarters in the country. The preliminary decision, which hasn t been finalized because of Facebook s procedural challenge, could force the social-media company to suspend sending personal information about EU users to Facebook s U.S. servers.