Germany's competition watchdog, the Federal Cartel Office, said Wednesday it had launched an investigation into Facebook on suspicion that it abused its dominant market position by infringing data protection rules. 

"The Bundeskartellamt has initiated a proceeding against Facebook Inc., USA, the Irish subsidiary of the company and Facebook Germany GmbH," the cartel office said in a statement. 

"The authority is investigating suspicions that with its specific terms of service on the use of user data, Facebook has abused its possibly dominant position in the market for social networks."