This week’s episode is about how the antitrust laws are being used to try to rebalance the relationship between the large Big Tech online platforms and the business users who depend on them. I focus on the European Commission investigation of Amazon (surrounding third-party vendors) and France’s investigation of Google (surrounding web publishers).
Reining in Consumer Big Tech: Antitrust and Beyond
The U.S. House of Representatives recently released a long-anticipated report on the state of antitrust in consumer tech. It found that key gateways and highways online are heavily consolidated around a few Consumer Big Tech giants and that reforms of antitrust laws are needed to inject more competition into the internet.
But while the report’s recommendations are ambitious, they are not enough to take on all of the harmful effects to our culture, economy, and politics caused by consolidated consumer tech markets. One reason is that they do not tackle the law’s foundational shortcomings, which overly complicate the antitrust analysis and must be reformed. The other reason goes to the core of what modern competition laws are and what they are not, which requires looking beyond antitrust to other rules and regulations to rein in the broader societal consequences of bigness in the digital economy.
Continue reading “Reining in Consumer Big Tech: Antitrust and Beyond”Weekly Wrap-Up — Episode 11
This week’s episode is all about the important report that was published this week in the investigation by the US House of Representative’s Judiciary Committee into antitrust issues in big tech. I discuss the proposed reforms contained in the report, and what it might mean for the legal landscape of the digital economy.
Weekly Wrap-Up — Episode 10
This week’s episode of the Weekly Wrap-Up covers the latest reports on Amazon’s dealings with third-party sellers, a sneak peek at the US Department of Justice’s antitrust “trial-of-the-century” against Google, and an update on the EU’s review of the tech giant’s acquisition of Fitbit.
Weekly Wrap-Up — Episode 9
This week’s episode of the Weekly Wrap-Up covers tech regulation updates including the latest on the future of TikTok’s operations in the US, a rare public spat involving two Big Tech giants–Facebook and Apple–in the context of the EU’s efforts to draft up a Digital Services Act, and the potential antitrust issues of NVIDIA’s acquisition of Arm.