DIGITAL

PLATFORMS AND
CONCENTRATION
SECOND ANNUAL ANTITRUST AND COMPETITION CONFERENCE
STIGLER CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF THE ECONOMY AND THE STATE
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO BOOTH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
 DIGITAL
PLATFORMS AND
CONCENTRATION
SECOND ANNUAL ANTITRUST AND COMPETITION CONFERENCE
STIGLER CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF THE ECONOMY AND THE STATE
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO BOOTH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

5807 SOUTH WOODLAWN AVENUE CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60637

Guy Rolnik, Editor
Produced by: Samantha Eyler-Driscoll, Asher Schechter, Camilo Patiño
A ProMarket Production
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
4 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
By Guy Rolnik

5 CHAPTER 1
EDISTORTIONS: HOW DATA-OPOLIES ARE DISSIPATING THE INTERNET’S
POTENTIAL
by Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice E. Stucke

8
CHAPTER 2
A GERMAN APPROACH TO ANTITRUST FOR DIGITAL PLATFORMS
By Justus Haucap

14 CHAPTER 3
WHAT MAKES TECH PLATFORMS SO POWERFUL?
By Lina M. Khan

18 CHAPTER 4
TWO VIEWS OF EXCLUSION: WHY THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE
UNITED STATES DIVERGED ON GOOGLE
By William E. Kovacic

22 CHAPTER 5
SOLUTIONS TO THE THREATS OF DIGITAL MONOPOLIES
By Sandra Matz, Guy Rolnik, and Moran Cerf

31 CHAPTER 6
THE UNPRECEDENTED POWER OF DIGITAL PLATFORMS TO CONTROL
OPINIONS AND VOTES
By Robert Epstein

34 CHAPTER 7
PLATFORMS AND ADJACENT MARKET COMPETITION: A LOOK AT
RECENT HISTORY
By Randy Picker
 DIGITAL PLATFORMS
DIGITAL AND
PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION
CONCENTRATION

EDITOR’S
INTRODUCTION
by Guy Rolnik

L
ast year we embarked here on a project to reinvigorate the
discussion on the questions of concentration and monopoly When we announced in summer 2017 that the second antitrust
in the United States—a discourse that has ebbed in the last and concentration conference would focus on the digital platforms,
decades. For two days scholars from various disciplines debated discussion of these questions in the United States was mostly limited
the question of whether we have enough empirical evidence to support to experts. That has changed markedly: just two weeks before the
the notion that concentration and monopoly are growing problems. conference we witnessed ten hours of testimony by Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg before Congress. While most of the discussion dealt
Given the University of Chicago’s unique position and role in with the recent Cambridge Analytica data breach, the challenges and
economics in general and specifically in antitrust, the discussion here concerns associated with the dominance of Facebook and the nature
drew considerable interest—enough to get more people engaged of its business model also started to get much attention.
in these questions. In the year that has passed since our “Is There
a Concentration Problem in America?” conference further studies What is probably clear today is that the discussion of the
and research have engaged with questions of concentration and dominance of the digital platforms cannot be limited to users welfare;
monopoly and potential influence on inequality wages and prices. it must also address the systemic risks and harms that concentration
of data can wreak on our democracy.
Some of last year’s participants argued that market power has
become a dominant phenomenon in 21st-century capitalism, others Political considerations and threats have always loomed behind
focused on the role that horizontal shareholding may have in the the antitrust and competition debate, but clearly do even more so
debate, and more radical voices called for reviving the political with the digital monopolies. It will be hard to separate economic
criteria that have at times played a role in antitrust in the past. Others considerations from politics given the outsized influence that some
argued that the antitrust toolbox is not the answer for the challenges of the digital giants have on the markets for informations, news,
to democracy posed by concentration of political power among large and ideas. Of course, the norm that antitrust enforcement should
corporations. be immune from direct political influence is integral to maintaining
its integrity and must be defended. Nevertheless, there is room
While most scholars and experts agree that the current antitrust for discussion whether antitrust should continue to rely on purely
toolbox is sufficient to tackle most questions of market power and economic analysis, or whether it should also take into account the
competition in the traditional product and service industries, this is reality in which firms can wield market power to acquire enormous
not the necessarily the case with the digital platform giants that have political influence. 
emerged in the last decade.
The 2nd Annual Stigler Center Antitrust and Concentration
Winner-take-all dynamics, network externalities, and two-sided Conference again brings together scholars, experts, and practitioners
markets where most consumers are on the “free” side, combined from many disciplines: economics, law, political science,
with vast accumulation of data among just a few firms, may force technology, venture capital, psychology, design, and the news
us to enlarge or amend the antitrust toolbox—or complement it with media. Their challenges are formidable and it’s high time to bring
other policy levers—if we want to address the significant concerns the most rigorous and broad intellectual energy to make sure that
for the economy, privacy, and democracy. the benefits of technology and innovation will not be squandered by
concentration of data and political and economic power.

4
 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

CHAPTER 1

eDISTORTIONS:
HOW DATA-
OPOLIES ARE
DISSIPATING
THE INTERNET’S
POTENTIAL by Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice E. Stucke

I
n its early days, the Internet was idealized as an Economies of scale and traditional and data-driven network
infrastructure where control is dispersed, and access and effects have characterized the evolution of the online system and
use are optimized. The advanced communications network led to the rise of key online gatekeepers. While such a dynamic
promoted connectivity, information flow, and innovation. is welcomed when it delivers greater efficiencies, innovation,
Indeed, in many ways, the Internet brought us closer to some and quality, reality has not always been as impressive. With size
economists’ notions of perfect competition, with lower prices, and power came the inevitable distortions, as leading platforms
greater choice, lower transaction costs, and better-informed and data-opolies take advantage of their privileged position to
market participants. control the flow of information and data and favor their own
related operations. 
The overwhelming abundance of information called for
efficient filtering systems to match one’s desires with the market The once decentralized market still retains its charm, but
offerings. After all, the theoretical benefit of endless choice behind the façade one may identify eDistortions that risk
serves for little in the real world. As the economist Herbert Simon undermining some of the benefits the online world is expected
eloquently said: “A wealth of information creates a poverty of to deliver. To illustrate, consider the following four examples.
attention.” And so, the online environment has seen the growth
of filters, data pools, and analytical tools aimed at optimizing our The first notable eDistortion concerns  quality degradation.
use of the Internet. In a competitive market one would expect providers to compete

5
 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

The potential harms from data-opolies can exceed those of earlier

monopolies. They can affect not only our wallets but our privacy,
autonomy, democracy, and well-being. One should therefore think hard
before resorting to the familiar mantra that antitrust can often do more
harm than good, as markets do a better job self-correcting.

on price, service, and quality. And yet, leading platforms that offer work against the interests of consumers and markets, such as
users limited outside options or impose high switching costs often exploitative techniques to increase users’ engagement with
engage in degradation of quality. One example, which we explored their platforms or exclusionary elements. eDistortions may
elsewhere, is degradation of search.1) Another one concerns lead to such innovation being more prominent. As the market
privacy protection, which is increasingly accepted as a potential dynamic changes, one may argue that the level of investment
parameter of non-price competition. Leading platforms can in innovation, which is often the focal point of yearly analysis,
depress privacy protection below competitive levels and collect should be considered alongside a more refined prism that
personal data above competitive levels. In heavily concentrated considers the beneficial or harmful nature of innovation.
markets, personal data is concentrated in a few firms. Consumers
have limited outside options that offer better privacy protection.
The collection of too much personal data can be the equivalent of
paying an excessive price, but one may question whether it should SO WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE US?
be viewed as a reward for winning the competitive process. 
First, the super-platforms’ control over the interface and users’
A second eDistortion concerns wealth transfers to data- behavioral biases have drifted us further from an undistorted
opolies. Increasingly one may identify the use of technology landscape. The gatekeeper can often influence what one sees
and asymmetric information to exploit consumers. Even when and clicks. Second, vertically integrated super-platforms can
products and services are ostensibly “free,” data-opolies can advance their own interests even when it harms users and
extract significant wealth from users on several levels, by getting competition. And so these eDistortions emerge in a seemingly
personal data without having to pay for the data’s fair market competitive and neutral environment where users may still
value, by getting creative content from users for free, or by using believe they are sovereign. The eDistortions are made possible
data as means to engage in discriminatory pricing and behavioral by users’ increased reliance on a handful of favorite interfaces
discrimination. Data-opolies can also extract wealth from input and those interfaces’ ability to shape the online environment,
providers and suppliers upstream. One example is when data- identify changes in purchasing behavior and changes in taste,
opolies scrape valuable content from photographers, authors, and track users’ presence online. Third, eDistortions may result
musicians, and other websites and post it on their own website. in a deadweight welfare loss. Two examples are when privacy
degradation increases distrust or when consumers become aware
A third eDistortion relates to costs on third parties. Those in of super-platforms distorting the results to favor their own
control of a key platform (such as a mobile phone operating system, operation. The abuse of asymmetric information once exposed
leading search engine, or leading online platform) can engage in may lead users to forego transactions they would have made in
cheap exclusion. This may include steering users and advertisers a competitive market.
to the provider’s own products and services to the detriment of
rival sellers on its platform (and contrary to consumers’ wishes); From an antitrust enforcement perspective, several challenges
degrading the independent app’s functionality; or reducing emerge: First, should eDistortions be viewed as harmful?
traffic to the independent app by making it harder to find on its Antitrust’s price-centric approach has led some to suggest that
search engine or app store. Data-opolies can also impose costs on there is no case for monopolization where services are free.
companies seeking to protect our privacy interests.  One example, Second, are eDistortions a problem that competition law can
which our book Virtual Competition  discusses, was Google remedy? Or should other legal avenues address them?  Third, if
kicking the privacy app Disconnect out of its Android app store. competition law can target eDistortions, can it do so predictably,
quickly, and accurately with its current tools?

The fourth example concerns the rise of negative These questions go to the heart of antitrust policy, to our
innovation.  Here data-opolies innovate, but in ways that understanding of its social aims and its role in society.

eDISTORTIONS: HOW DATA-OPOLIES ARE DISSIPATING THE INTERNET’S POTENTIAL 6

 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

Should antitrust law focus on narrow issues (such as the ability

to raise price in narrowly defined markets) that make it irrelevant
to many activities that impact the citizens’ welfare in a digital
environment, or should antitrust take into account the political,
social, and economic risks from concentrated economic power?

As one approaches these challenges, it is important to note

that the potential harms from data-opolies can exceed those of
earlier monopolies. They can affect not only our wallets but
our privacy, autonomy, democracy, and well-being. One should
therefore think hard before resorting to the familiar mantra that
antitrust can often do more harm than good, as markets do a
better job self-correcting.

Ariel Ezrachi is the Slaughter and May Professor of Competition Law and
Director of the Centre for Competition Law and Policy at the University of
Oxford

Maurice E. Stucke is Professor of Law at University of Tennessee College of

Law and Counsel at The Konkurrenz

eDISTORTIONS: HOW DATA-OPOLIES ARE DISSIPATING THE INTERNET’S POTENTIAL 7

 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

CHAPTER 2

A GERMAN
APPROACH TO
ANTITRUST
FOR DIGITAL
PLATFORMS
by Justus Haucap

T
he fast growth of digital platforms such as Amazon, platforms is necessarily welfare-enhancing when compared to
Google, Facebook, and company, as well as their high a monopolistic market structure.  While, generally speaking,
market capitalization, is causing rising concerns for competition between several firms is almost always beneficial
many policymakers around the globe, especially—but not in standard markets (as long as the market is not characterized
exclusively—in Europe. Given that share prices reflect what by natural monopoly conditions), this general wisdom does not
markets expect regarding a firm’s future profitability, high always hold for multi-sided markets. Even if multiple platforms
share prices can also reflect expectations about (future) market are not associated with additional fixed costs, the existence of
power. As platforms are characterized by economies of scale multiple platforms may not be efficient due to the presence of
and network effects, expectations or concerns about increasing direct and indirect network effects.
market concentration are legitimate (see, e.g., Haucap &
Heimeshoff 2014). As Caillaud and Jullien (2003) and Jullien (2006) have
shown, a monopoly platform can be efficient because network
However, not every platform market is highly concentrated. effects are maximized when all agents manage to coordinate on
Counterexamples include online retailers, digital real estate a single platform. Strong network effects tend to make monopoly
brokers, travel agents, and online dating sites. The presence structures efficient, while the risk of platform overload and
of indirect network effects is not sufficient for a monopoly or lower participation rates and users’ so-called multi-homing
high levels of market concentration. From a theoretical point of opportunities suggest that competition is also efficient in digital
view, it is also not clear whether competition between several markets. In fact, it is not only the welfare effects of a monopoly

8
 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

in such markets that are unclear, but also whether the market is Google—this is not true for social networks such as Facebook
quasi-naturally converging towards a monopoly structure. where the number of users is an important determinant.

Another form of switching costs can be found on auction

platforms such as eBay, where apart from indirect network
FACTORS DETERMINING CONCENTRATION effects individual reputations are also highly relevant. As the
IN PLATFORM MARKETS reputation is built up as a function of the number of transactions
already conducted over the platform and is therefore eBay- or
Evans and Schmalensee (2008, 2015) have identified five platform-specific, changing platforms involves some switching
factors that determine the concentration process in two-sided costs if reputations are not portable across platforms.
markets, as described in the following table:
Another countervailing force is capacity constraints. While
for physical platforms such as shopping centers, fairs, and
nightclubs, space is physically limited,1) this does not hold
for digital markets. However, with regard to online markets
advertising, space is often restricted since too much advertising
can be perceived as a nuisance by users and can therefore
decrease the platform’s value in the recipients’ eyes (Becker and
Murphy 1993; Bagwell 2007).

In electronic markets like auction platforms or dating

sites capacity limits can also emerge as a result of negative
externalities caused by additional users. If additional users
Table 1. Determinants of Concentration on Platform Markets. lead to a more heterogeneous group search costs may increase.
Source: Evans and Schmalensee (2008, p. 679).
In contrast, the more homogeneous the users are, the higher
the value of a given platform can be for the demand side. If
for example only certain people visit a particular platform (as
It is relatively straightforward and immediately plausible some platforms are, for example, mainly visited by women,
that indirect network effects and economies of scale lead to golf players, academics, etc.), targeted advertising is easier for
increasing concentration. The strength of these indirect network advertising companies. Also note that some dating sites advertise
effects will differ from platform to platform. In general, digital that they only represent a certain group of clients (for example,
platforms are typically characterized by a cost structure with only academics). This reduces the search costs for all visitors
a relatively high proportion of fixed costs and relatively involved. Additional users would make the group of users more
low variable costs (see, e.g., Jullien 2006). For example, for heterogeneous and not necessarily add value as they increase the
eBay,  Expedia,  Booking.com, etc., most of the costs arise search cost for other users.
for managing the respective databases, while additional
transactions within the capacity of the databases usually do not In summary, while there are tendencies that foster
cause additional cost. Increasing returns to scale are therefore concentration in digital markets, there are also countervailing
typical for digital platforms. forces. Moreover, one should note that many digital platforms
drive competition in their respective product markets. Amazon,
The most important countervailing force is multi-homing eBay, and other online retail platforms have intensified
opportunities. How easy it is for users to multi-home depends, competition in retail markets, Uber and company have
among other things, on (a) switching costs (if they exist) and injected competition into the taxi cab industry, AirBnB and
(b) the structure and height of platform charges. To switch, similar platforms facilitate competition within the short-term
for example, from one online travel agency to another is accommodation market, and so on. Not surprisingly,  quite a
usually associated with relatively low switching costs. Users few parties that advocate platform regulation also have a vivid
can also switch away from Google to another search engine interest in limiting competition in the concerned markets.
without major costs if a switch appears attractive. Similarly, it
is typically relatively easy for sellers to open a second, third,
or fourth Internet store, especially when compared to opening
more brick-and-mortar stores. In contrast, switching costs ANTITRUST LAWS FOR PLATFORM
between social networks are generally higher because of strong MARKETS
direct network effects and the effort needed to coordinate user
groups. While for Google no significant direct network effects In response to the growing relevance of digital platforms,
exist—i.e., it does not directlymatter how many other people use Germany—probably as the first jurisdiction—has, in 2017,

A GERMAN APPROACH TO ANTITRUST FOR DIGITAL PLATFORMS 9

 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

introduced a number of additional criteria into its competition difficulties in defining markets without sales can be illustrated
law that the German competition authority and the courts now by the approach the European Commission has taken in the
need to consider when assessing market power in platform Google shopping case.
markets. The newly introduced §18 no. 3a of the Act against
Restraints of Competition now requires that, when assessing
an undertaking’s position in a market, the following five
factors need to be also considered for multi-sided markets ON THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION’S
and networks: GOOGLE SHOPPING CASE

The European Commission holds the view that “Google has

(1) Direct and indirect network effects
systematically given prominent placement to its own comparison
(2) The parallel use of several services and users’ switching costs shopping service” and it has “demoted rival comparison
(3) Economies of scale in relation with network effects shopping services in its search results.” As Google Shopping
(4) Access to data relevant for competition is much more visible to consumers than typical comparison
(5) Competitive forces of innovation
shopping services, the European Commission is of the view that
“Google’s practices amount to an abuse of Google’s dominant
position in general internet search by stifling competition in
comparison shopping markets.” As will be outlined below, from
While these five factors certainly help to prevent especially an empirical perspective it is unclear, however, whether (a) there
the courts from focusing too narrowly on markets shares and is a market for general internet search and, if so, who is active
other concentration measures only, it is rather unclear how in that market and (b) whether Google Shopping is part of a
these factors can be measured in practice. While the ease and comparison shopping market.
practice of multi-homing may be relatively easily measured
empirically, the strength of network effects is more difficult to To be more precise, the European Commission assumes
measure, as are the remaining three factors. While competition that there is a distinct market for comparison shopping services
authorities have so far heavily relied on factors that are where consumers do not actually shop, but only compare offers.
reasonably easy to determine (market shares, concentration In the Commission’s eyes, Google Shopping, foundem, idealo.
rates, price-cost margins, profitability measures, patterns de, etc., are active in this particular market, while market places
of substitution, and so on), thereby economizing on law such as Amazon and eBay or online retailers such as Zalando
enforcement costs, the newly introduced factors are more are not.
difficult to operationalize. Hence, the additional factors also
introduce more leeway for the competition authority as well To put it differently, the Commission assumes that most
as greater legal uncertainty for firms. consumers do not choose between, say, Amazon and Google
when they want to compare offers for new sports shoes, electronic
A second issue addressed in last year’s competition consumer goods, or other products. In the Commission’s view,
policy reform has been a clarification with respect to market eBay or Zalando are not relevant alternatives for consumers,
definition. The fact that some services are not offered in either, but only true product comparison sites where consumers
exchange for money in itself no longer prevents competition cannot shop are in the same market. This assumption is, however,
authorities from defining a separate market for them. Hence, not based on any study or evidence of consumer behavior, but on
social networks or Internet search engines may constitute the mere insight that Google Shopping does not offer products
relevant markets not only in advertising, but also for users. for sale, but only links to other webpages that offer products for
Even though this clarification may be helpful for the courts, sale. This also implies that the market definition would change
the practical difficulties in defining markets in the absence should Google Shopping introduce one-click shopping, or
of sales and price variations remain. While theoretically an vertically integrate into retailing products itself, or develop
adjusted SSNIP test may be defined (see Filistrucchi 2008; into a marketplace in its own. To ignore Amazon, eBay,
Filistrucchi et al. 2014), it is in practice extremely difficult Zalando, and the like as competitors for Google Shopping
to measure a percentage decrease in quality or privacy or without studying actual consumer behavior is risky, at best.
a percentage increase in data requirements. The practical If I ask my students, for example, where they start shopping

The Commission has decided to take a normative rather than a positive

approach to market definition, which leaves for economics the role of
identifying effects that remedies may have, at best.

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 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

for products, many start immediately at Amazon and it is searches and it just happens that Google is active in all of these
not implausible that many other consumers also shop this markets. Again, completely neglecting consumer behavior does
way. Neglecting true consumer behavior, however, is rather not strengthen the European Commission’s case.
problematic.
The Commission has decided to take a normative rather than a
In addition, the Commission’s analysis also ignores that positive approach to market definition, which leaves for economics
Google Shopping is very clearly labelled as advertising. Hence, the role of identifying effects that remedies may have, at best.
it is questionable whether many consumers expect Google
Shopping to be an encompassing comparison shopping site.
Moreover, it is even explained that Google is paid for these
advertisements, which is by far less clear on other comparison ON THE GERMAN FACEBOOK CASE
shopping sites. Hence, it is not clear how many consumers
really expect a “neutral” listing of Google Shopping results, Since many platforms do not charge both sides of their
given that it is labelled as advertising. Put differently, Google market, but only one of them (e.g., advertisers, but not users),
Shopping does not portray itself as a neutral metasearch engine, new forms of exploitative abuse may (theoretically) emerge,
as some competing comparison shopping sites do. Quite such as demanding “too much data.” Interestingly enough,
possibly advertising platforms (such as Google Shopping) and Germany’s Federal Cartel Office (FCO) is currently conducting
metasearch engines are regarded as substitutes by consumers, an investigation into Facebook’s behavior vis-à-vis its users.
but it still remains speculative without any evidence on More precisely, the FCO is investigating whether Facebook
consumer behavior. has a dominant position in the market for social networks and
whether Facebook’s general terms and conditions are inadequate
Similarly, the Commission simply assumes that a market and constitute an exploitative abuse of market power. While the
for general search exists. Whether such a distinct product FCO’s theory of harm has not been laid out in writing yet and
market exists is rather unclear, however. Consumers typically is therefore not entirely clear as to the details, it appears that,
have specific rather than general questions. They look for as a supposedly dominant player, Facebook has responsibilities
information on books, people, the weather, sports results, that go beyond the responsibilities of non-dominant parties with
hotels, flights, share prices, restaurants, sports shoes, and so respect to privacy standards and data usage.

Quite a few parties that advocate platform regulation also have a vivid
interest in limiting competition in the concerned markets.

on. Most of this information can be searched for on Google, Such a requirement, however, may not safeguard but even
but it can also be searched at Amazon (books, sports shoes), jeopardize competition in the concerned markets. The reasoning
LinkedIn and Wikipedia (people), specialized weather leading to this conclusion can be briefly explained as follows: if
and sports sites, Booking (hotels), Yelp and Foursquare one assumes that social network users do not receive disutility from
(restaurants), and so on. While it is true that many of these sharing personal data and having data sets combined, collecting and
sites do not directly provide links to third-party webpages combining data from users can obviously not be an exploitative
(even though many also do), people typically do not search abuse, as consumers cannot be exploited if they do not mind
for links, but for information. For almost every specific providing the data that is collected. Put differently, there cannot be
question that Internet users have there are more options than any harm inflicted onto users if they do not receive any disutility
searching on Google. Taking books as an example, one may from having their data combined. On the contrary, as combining
assume that Amazon is the world’s leading search engine for data facilitates the development of better matching technologies
books where people want to find new books or information to rank news and other information to match user interests, the
about certain books. Is Amazon, therefore, the dominant book prohibition to do so would lead to a deterioration of the services
search engine that may not favor its own offers? offered (as the matching technology would deteriorate).

Given that Google does not charge users who search and, At the same time, Facebook would become less competitive
hence, Google’s price (of zero) on this side of its market does in advertising markets vis-à-vis Google and other market
not vary, we know close to nothing about potential consumer participants. As data is used to develop and offer better services,
responses to potential price increases. This also implies that we preventing Facebook from collecting, combining, and using the
do not know whether a market for general search in fact exists data is equivalent to requiring Facebook to be less innovative
at all or whether there are many, many markets for specific and to offer inferior services—both would harm competition.

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 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

In contrast, Facebook users and advertisers tend to benefit personal information from my mails, my calendar and so on, it
from the use and combination of “on-Facebook” and “off- can produce very good, personalized search results. Hence, it is
Facebook” data, as the usage and combination of different data access to very personal, non-anonymous data that is decisive for
sources facilitates the improvement of matching algorithms to obtaining ideal search results, while anonymous data is of limited
rank information and news for users. In addition, it is difficult usefulness. Forcing Google or Google users, however, to also
to conceive how users can be exploited by using their data as provide private data to competitors would conflict with privacy
their data resources are not depleted when used. Hence, any concerns. Similarly, access to anonymized or pseudonomized
analogy with data as a form of money or payment is misleading, data from social networks is likely to be of limited usefulness
as monetary resources cannot be used multiple times. Finally, for competitors. Simply assuming that competitors can offer
empirical evidence suggests that (most) people do not feel services of equal quality by accessing a dominant’s firm data in
exploited when their data is used. Quite in contrast, people pseudonomized form may only yield limited insights.
tend to willingly share data in order to obtain benefits such as
improved services. What may be more helpful is empowering users to voluntarily
port their data themselves to competing service providers. One
If, however, we assume that sufficiently many consumers do should note, however, that difficult questions remain for data
receive disutility from data being combined, requiring Facebook that is generated through interaction (as, for example, in social
to use or combine less data or only data from certain sources networks) so that individual rights of more than one party are
and to offer higher privacy standards than competitors would concerned.
be equivalent to requesting Facebook by law to offer superior
products than rivals (and, in the extreme case, to foreclose the
market), which would also harm competition.
CONCLUSION
Hence, requiring Facebook to use or combine less data or
only data from certain sources would stifle competition. Either The concern that digital platforms may become dominant in
Facebook would be required to become less innovative and certain markets is clearly legitimate. How to react and which
to deteriorate their service (in the likely case that most users remedies to impose is a much more difficult question, though. A
do not receive disutility from having data sets combined) or, number of proposals for fiercer platform regulation would also
alternatively, Facebook would be required to outperform its limit competition in the concerned markets such as retailing,
rivals (if most users did receive disutility from having data sets transport, accommodation, etc., and should, accordingly, be
combined). digested with caution.

While privacy issues may need to be newly addressed in In addition, competition authorities sometimes even over-
digital markets, antitrust laws do not appear to be the most enforce nondiscrimination rules, as, for example, in most so-
effective instrument for safeguarding privacy. called dual pricing cases (see Haucap & Stühmeier 2016),
thereby even promoting market concentration.

DATA PORTABILITY AND DATA ACCESS

AS A SALUTARY REMEDY?
Justus Haucap is the director of the
A remedy regularly proposed to facilitate competition in digital Duesseldorf Institute for Competition Eco-
markets is regulated access to data resources that dominant—or nomics (DICE) at Heinrich-Heine University
even all—firms use (see, e.g., Argenton & Prüfer 2012). While there
of Duesseldorf
are obvious privacy issues, access may be granted to anonymized
or pseudonomized data. It is unclear, however, whether access to
a dominant firm’s anonymized or pseudonomized data can really
mitigate major competition problems.
REFERENCES
To provide an example, consider the case of Google search
where access to Google’s historical search and click data has Argenton, C. & J. Prüfer (2012), Search Engine Competition
been proposed as a promising remedy. Since Google search is with Network Externalities, Journal of Competition Law and
becoming more and more personalized, access to pseudonomized Economics 8, 73-105.
data is of limited usefulness. Google’s search results are, among
other things, very good because many people also use Google Bagwell, K. (2007): The Economic Analysis of Advertising,
calendar, Gmail, Google Maps, etc. Given that Google can use in: Mark Armstrong and Robert Porter (Eds.): Handbook of

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 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

Industrial Organization 3, 1701-1844, Elsevier, Amsterdam. Filistrucchi,  L., D. Geradin, E. van Damme & P. Affeldt
(2014), Market Definition in Two-Sided Markets: Theory and
Becker, G.S. &  K.M. Murphy  (1993), A Simple Theory of Practice,  Journal of Competition Law  and  Economics  10,
Advertising as a Good, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 108, 293-339.
941-964.
Jullien, B. (2006), Two-Sided Markets and Electronic
Caillaud, B. & B. Jullien (2003), Chicken & Egg: Competition Intermediaries. In: G. Illing and M. Peitz (Eds.)  Industrial
among Intermediation Service Providers,  Rand Journal of Organization and the Digital Economy, MIT-Press:
Economics, Vol. 34, 309-328. Cambridge, 272-303.

Evans, D. S. & R. Schmalensee (2008), Markets with Two- Haucap, J. & U. Heimeshoff (2014), Google, Facebook,
Sided Platforms, Issues in Competition Law and Policy, Vol. Amazon, eBay: Is the Internet Driving Competition or Market
1, 667-693. Monopolization?,  International Economics and Economic
Policy, 11, 49-61.
Evans, David S. & Richard Schmalensee (2015), The Antitrust
Analysis of Multi-Sided-Platform Businesses, in: R. Blair and Haucap, J. & T. Stühmeier (2015): Competition and Antitrust in
D. Sokol (eds.), Oxford Handbook on International Antitrust Internet Markets, in: J. Bauer and M. Latzer (eds.), Handbook
Economics, Vol. 1, Oxford University Press, 404-449. on the Economics of the Internet, Edward Elgar: Cheltenham,
183-210.
Filistrucchi, Lapo (2008), A SSNIP Test for Two-Sided
Markets: The Case of Media, NET Institute Working  Paper
No. 2008-34.

A GERMAN APPROACH TO ANTITRUST FOR DIGITAL PLATFORMS 13

 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

CHAPTER 3

WHAT MAKES
TECH PLATFORMS
SO POWERFUL?
by Lina M. Khan

A
handful of tech platforms mediate a large and growing still in its early stages. This essay seeks to help advance that discussion
share of our commerce and communications. Over the by identifying forms and sources of platform power, explaining how
last year, the public has come to realize that the power this power is being or could be exploited, and exploring historical
these firms wield may pose significant hazards. Elected leaders analogies and legal hooks that could help us tackle it.
ranging from Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to Senator Ted
Cruz (R-TX) have expressed alarm at the level of control that firms
like Amazon, Alphabet, and Facebook enjoy. In a  recent poll, a
majority of Americans expressed concern that the government FORMS AND SOURCES OF PLATFORM
wouldn’t do enough to regulate US tech companies. As the editor POWER AND ITS ABUSES
of BuzzFeed observed, a “major trend in American politics” is “the
palpable, and perhaps permanent, turn against the tech industry,” The markets in which these firms operate and the specific
now viewed as “sinister new centers of unaccountable power.” mechanics of their business models somewhat vary. For this reason,
more extensive studies of platform power would benefit from being
New revelations continue to unveil the degree of power these platform-specific. But despite their differences, Amazon, Alphabet,
firms wield and its consequences. The potential effects range from and Facebook share key forms and sources of power.
stifling startups and undermining innovation to manipulating
the flow of information and enabling foreign interference in our The first is gatekeeper power. The source of this power is the
elections. Despite growing recognition of platform power, public fact that these companies serve effectively as infrastructure for
conversation about why this power exists and what to do about it is digital markets. They have captured control over technologies

14
 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

By placing a platform in direct competition with the firms using its

infrastructure, this form of integration also creates a core conflict of
interest, incentivizing a platform to privilege its own goods and services
over those offered by third parties.

that other firms rely on to do business in the online economy. Amazon risk seeing their accounts suspended, and getting kicked
Fifty-five percent of online shopping searches, for example, now off its platform often means not just seeing lower revenue but
begin on Amazon’s platform; last year the company enjoyed over having to lay off employees. Google and Facebook’s ad duopoly,
40 percent of online revenue in the United States. Alphabet and meanwhile, gives them ample power to raise prices. Last quarter
Facebook together capture 73 percent of all digital advertising Facebook hiked the average price per ad by 43 percent.
in the country and 83 percent of all growth, while Apple and
Alphabet jointly account for 99 percent of the world’s smartphone Platforms also use their gatekeeper power to entrench their
operating systems. For producers, retailers, advertisers, and app gatekeeper power, limiting the ability of third-party merchants
developers looking to reach users and consumers, these platforms to reach users independently. Amazon, for example, closely
are vital intermediaries, the railroads of the 21st century. monitors communications between third-party Marketplace
merchants and consumers, penalizing merchants who direct
The degree of market control enjoyed by dominant platforms consumers to their own independent websites or other sales
is protected both by network effects and the self-reinforcing channels. Gatekeeper power now also risks shaping the content
advantages of data, which serve as an entry barrier. Their and production of news. Dependence on Facebook and Google
entrenched positions are reflected partly in their skyrocketing for traffic has led publishers to package news according to
valuations; Wall Street is pricing their stock at multiples that the dictates of the platforms’ algorithms. As a bill recently
seem to reflect market power. Newcomers that have attempted introduced by House Representative David Cicilline stated,
to compete with a platform in a platform market (like Jet.com) “An entity with the power to dictate the terms of distribution of
have been acquired by other giants (Walmart). news has the power to dictate the content of news.” The head of
the Newspaper Association of America  noted, “Facebook and
This means that not only are the platforms vital intermediaries, Google are our primary regulators.”
but—in many instances—they are the only real option. Even
when producers, retailers, advertisers, publishers, and app A second form of power is leveraging. The source of this
developers manage to find alternate channels, those narrower power is the fact that the platforms not only serve as critical
paths can only really supplement access on the margins. The infrastructure, but are also integrated across markets. This enables
platforms generate too much business and attract too many a platform to leverage its platform dominance to establish a
eyeballs for firms to bypass them entirely. This renders business position in a separate or ancillary market. By placing a platform
users highly dependent on the platforms—a finding confirmed in direct competition with the firms using its infrastructure,
by a recent study undertaken by the European Commission. this form of integration also creates a core conflict of interest,
The EC wrote, “Many of the business users have indicated that incentivizing a platform to privilege its own goods and services
they try to avoid any conflict with platforms, fearing a negative over those offered by third parties.
impact on their business. This applies especially to conflicts
with the largest platforms, as business users indicate that often Last year the European Commission announced that this
no viable alternative for these major platforms exists due to their form of discrimination violates European competition laws. It
scale, geographic range and the number of (potential) customers fined Google $2.7 billion for “systematically giv[ing] prominent
active on the platforms.” placement to its own comparison shopping service” and
“demot[ing] rival comparison shopping services in its search
Platforms can use their gatekeeper power to extort and extract results,” leading traffic to third-party websites to plummet. The
better terms from the users that depend on their infrastructure. EU competition authority is also conducting investigations into
For example, Amazon has disabled the “buy-buttons” for book potentially anticompetitive leveraging tactics Google engaged
publishers in order to extract better terms; executives have also in through its Android operating system and AdSense. Apple,
described how the company tweaks algorithms during negotiations meanwhile, has previously blocked updates to Spotify from
to remind firms of its power to sink their sales. Recently the the App Store; Spotify alleges this tactic sought to undermine
company has started offloading costs onto suppliers, subsidizing Spotify as a rival to Apple Music. If gatekeeper power gives
its shipping costs by raising fees for the companies that sell platforms the ability to extort, leveraging power gives platforms
through its platform. Merchants attempting to negotiate with the incentive to discriminate.   

WHAT MAKES TECH PLATFORMS SO POWERFUL? 15

 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

A third form of power is information exploitation. The source to intervene at the very earliest stages of a company’s growth
of this power is the various forms of data that platforms collect, means platforms can effectively nip emerging rivals in the bud. 
in multiple markets. Platforms gather enormous amounts of
information, ranging from the amount of time you hover your To be sure, platforms exhibit other forms and mechanisms of
mouse over a particular button and the number of days an item power. But these three sources—gatekeeper power, leveraging
sits in your shopping basket, to every location you’ve visited power, and information exploitation power—go far to explain
with your phone and how you psychologically react to different the current dominance these firms enjoy.
posts and words.

In some cases, platforms also track user activity on third-

party websites and applications. Platforms can use this data in a WAYS TO ADDRESS PLATFORM POWER
host of ways, altering what information you see based on your
profile. Platforms can also harness this data to engage in first- Breaking down platform power into its specific forms
degree price discrimination, charging each consumer a different and sources allows us to distill what about platform power, if
price for the same good or service. Uber, for example, has anything, is actually new. In other words, we can understand
admitted that it engages in personalized price discrimination. The which facets of platform power we have grappled with in the
degree to which other platforms are engaging in similar practices past, and which aspects present new issues that require new
has not been publicly documented. Separate from the risks of thinking and/or new policy action.
discrimination, the extent of platforms’ data-gathering creates
significant privacy threats. Even robust privacy controls would Two of these forms of power—gatekeeper power and
only go so far to protect users, given the security vulnerabilities leveraging power—we have tackled in the past. Gatekeeper
that inevitably arise when data is concentrated in a single entity. power can arise any time there is a network monopoly. Indeed,
the gatekeeper power of the railroads—and the railroads’ abuse
Platforms also engage in information exploitation against the of this power—gave rise to the anti-monopoly movement in the
businesses that use their services to reach markets. Amazon, for late 1800s, ultimately leading to the creation of the Interstate
example, collects swaths of information on the merchants selling Commerce Commission in 1887 and the passage of the Sherman
through its Marketplace. It routinely uses this data to inform its Antitrust Act in 1890. Determining that breaking up the railroads
own sales and products, exploiting insights generated by third- would hamper our national transportation system, Congress
party retailers and producers to go head-to-head with them, designed a regime to prevent railroads from abusing their power.
rolling out replica products that it can rank higher in search results Most notably, railroads had to abide by common carriage rules,
or price below-cost. In this way Amazon’s platform functions as providing equal access on equal terms, and had to publicly list
a petri dish, where independent firms undertake the initial risks their prices. This helped scale back their power to arbitrarily
of bringing products to market and Amazon gets to reap from hike prices and extort the farmers and suppliers reliant on the
their insights, often at their expense. Facebook has similarly railroads to get to market.
developed systematic ability to exploit information. Through
acquiring Onavo, a privacy-enhancing technology, Facebook Indeed, common carriage has been a traditional tool for
closely tracks which competing applications are diverting maintaining the benefits of network monopoly while preventing
attention from Facebook’s own app. Using this information, the private firms who manage this monopoly from exploiting
Facebook can either make an aggressive acquisition bid, taming their power. Mandating nondiscriminatory access in the form
the nascent threat by bringing it in-house, or can introduce an of common carriage has also been applied to inns, ports,
identical app, eating into its business. stockyards, and grain elevators, to name a few. Most recently,
the Federal Communications Commission under the Obama
The issue here is not that the platforms introduce rival administration adopted common carriage rules in the form of
goods—thereby increasing competition—but that their “network neutrality,” prohibiting discrimination by Internet
strategies are based on a significant information asymmetry service providers. Introducing common carriage for platforms
that exists between the platforms and everyone else. The ability would be one way to tackle their gatekeeper power. A platform

The issue here is not that the platforms introduce rival goods—thereby
increasing competition—but that their strategies are based on a
significant information asymmetry that exists between the platforms
and everyone else.

WHAT MAKES TECH PLATFORMS SO POWERFUL? 16

 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

neutrality regime could require a platform to treat all commerce are surveillance-based, they will continue to collect as much
flowing through its infrastructure equally, preventing a platform information as possible. The other challenge that information
from using the threat of discrimination to extract and extort. exploitation poses is not to privacy but to competition. Gathering
data on business activity that relies on the platform gives the
A set of tools also exists to tackle leveraging power. platform an information advantage it can use to extort value
Structural separations and prophylactic bans could limit the from those businesses by harvesting their insights, or to thwart
ability of dominant platforms to enter certain distinct lines nascent rivals in ancillary lines of business.
of business. This, in turn, would limit the ability of dominant
platforms to leverage their platform advantage into other areas. Tackling information exploitation power is not
Structural separations preventing platforms from engaging in straightforward. One idea is to regulate their conduct, limiting
business activity that places them in direct competition with what information platforms collect and how they use it. This
the firms using their platforms would also help eliminate the would include introducing privacy regulations like those adopted
conflict of interest that platforms face when they own both the by Europe in its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
pipes and the products flowing through them. As with common and prohibiting platforms from using information collected
carriage, structural separations have been a mainstay tool for on their platforms to advantage distinct lines of business. But
tackling the power of network monopolies and other firms that these forms of regulation risk proving ineffective unless we also
play an infrastructure-like role in the economy. Structural bans address the underlying structure of platforms. Structural reforms
have been applied to railroads, telecommunications carriers, would include: structuring competition in platform markets by
TV networks, and banks. Introducing a separations regime for undoing, for example, Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and
platforms would help prevent leveraging and eliminate a core WhatsApp, prohibiting future acquisitions, and granting users
conflict of interest currently embedded in the business model of ownership rights over their data; requiring social networks
dominant platforms. and search engines to spin off their ad networks, ending their
surveillance-based business models; and prohibiting platforms
Information exploitation power presents more of a challenge. from entering lines of business that depend on their platform
To some extent, we have addressed information exploitation in (i.e., the kind of separations regime advocated above). By
the past, through disclosure regimes and laws requiring public targeting the underlying structure and business model, these
auditing of privately collected information. But two aspects of measures target the incentive and ability of platforms to collect
platforms’ information exploitation power seem new. One is and harness information.
the sheer volume of information that these firms collect, and
the security vulnerabilities created when a handful of platforms The discussion around how to tackle platform power is just
capture swaths of data. Partly the issue is structural: concentrated beginning. As the debate develops, it’s worth recalling that
data is more vulnerable to security breaches than is that same certain facets of platform power are not new, and that existing
data dispersed. Partly it comes down to business model: as levers and concepts can be retooled to ensure that the platforms
digital advertising firms, Google and Facebook make money are structured to align with—and not undermine—open markets,
through collecting information. So long as their business models fair competition, and the free flow of information.

WHAT MAKES TECH PLATFORMS SO POWERFUL? 17

 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

CHAPTER 4
TWO VIEWS OF
EXCLUSION:
WHY THE
EUROPEAN UNION
AND THE UNITED
STATES DIVERGED
ON GOOGLE by William E. Kovacic

F
or the public enforcement of antitrust law against agency to bring a big case, this was it. Instead, the FTC stood
dominant firm misconduct, Brussels is the capital down.
of the world. The US federal antitrust agencies, the
Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division and the Federal The EU also has devoted great attention to complaints of
Trade Commission (FTC) once ruled this domain. In the past improper exclusion by Google, with much different results. In
15 years, the European Commission (EC) and its Competition 2017, the EC fined Google billions in an abuse of dominance
Directorate (DG Comp) have put the DOJ and FTC in the shade. case involving essentially the same issues and facts considered
in the FTC inquiry. Today the Commission seems poised to
Recent antitrust scrutiny of Google by DG Comp and the announce still larger sanctions in a second, related matter.
FTC underscores the European Union’s ascent to preeminence.
Earlier in this decade, the FTC took no action following an Why have the EU and US antitrust agencies reached divergent
intensive investigation of Google for illegal monopolization. outcomes in investigating claims of improper exclusion by
The FTC had assembled a dream team to help develop a case— Google? This discussion focuses chiefly on constraints that make
notable additions included Ed Felton and Tim Wu. The agency’s the US system less inclined to intervene against dominant firms.
five-member board contained three Democrats (Chairman Jon In doing so, I depart from the conventional explanation, featured
Leibowitz and Commissioners Julie Brill and Edith Ramirez) in many modern critiques of US antitrust policy, for why the US
who had pledged to press for a more activist application of the enforcement agencies have brought relatively few cases against
Commission’s powers. If there was to be a moment ripe for the dominant firms.

18
 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

For advocates of a more powerful enforcement, the antidote is

straightforward. Appoint officials with a strong taste for intervention and
courage to fight, give them generous resources, and back them up with
political leadership that resists industry lobbying.

intervention and courage to fight, give them generous resources,

DEMANDS FOR MORE AGGRESSIVE US and back them up with political leadership that resists industry
ENFORCEMENT INVOLVING DOMINANT lobbying. European experience shows how it can be done.
FIRMS Take a broader, more egalitarian vision of competition law
that regards the Chicago School with suspicion, add a tough-
Modern critiques about the weakness of US policy toward minded charismatic agency leader, and surround the authority
dominant firms blame subdued enforcement on acceptance with supportive political institutions, and you get strong
of non-intervention perspectives generated by the Chicago intervention against Google and other commercial giants.
School from the 1950s into the early 1980s. The culprits
are academics such as Aaron Director, Robert Bork, Frank AN ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION FOR US
Easterbrook, and Richard Posner, whose views imbued the ENFORCEMENT POLICY
federal enforcement agencies with excessive caution about
challenging dominant firm conduct. From this perspective, the Why haven’t the US federal antitrust agencies brought more
Obama era certifies the paralyzing grip of non-intervention cases like the European Commission’s? In particular, why didn’t the
biases on DOJ and the FTC. Obama’s leadership team had US agencies step on the accelerator during the tenure of the Obama
control of the two federal agencies for eight years, but the administration and bring monopolization cases against Google and
single-firm conduct agenda proved to be thin. DOJ accepted other tech luminaries? No vision? Not enough guts? Political capture?
settlements in a few interesting but lesser order cases.
The FTC obtained settlements with Intel and a few other I don’t think any of these hypotheses explain why the FTC
defendants, and the agency gained its first victory before the backed away from a case against Google, or why the Obama
court of appeals in a monopolization case (McWane) since leadership at DOJ came away with so little in eight years on the
the late 1960s. Yet, in its Google inquiry, the matter the monopolization front. Here’s another interpretation based mainly on
agency’s leadership depicted as its signature piece, the FTC the perspective of an outsider. I was a member of the FTC when the
closed the file upon receiving a letter from Google that made agency began its Google inquiry, but I was not present during the
commitments (not embodied in an enforceable order) to make peak periods of the investigation nor during the agency’s decision
some adjustments in its practices. to close the file. I have no private information about what guided
the decisions of the FTC’s senior staff or the members themselves.
Critics have given a range of explanations for the Nor do I know the rationale behind DOJ’s decision not to pursue
FTC’s retreat in Google and, more generally, the Obama investigations or cases in matters that the trade press reported as
administration’s limited enforcement against single-firm possible candidates for scrutiny from 2009 through 2016. Two
misconduct. One theme, noted above, is that  even the other explanations, sketched below, deserve closer attention as one
seemingly pro-enforcement officials and their advisors have contemplates an expansion of the US zone of enforcement.
been bitten by Chicago School mosquitos so often that they
do not realize they have a low-grade form of non-intervention INFLUENCES UPON US DOCTRINE
malaria. As a consequence, the enforcement agencies have
fallen back on a cramped interpretation of their mandate that What is clear is the nature of the legal doctrine that confronted the
focuses myopically on consumer interests to the exclusion agencies in this period and still stands in the path of monopolization
of other important values. A less charitable view is that prosecutions. As developed over the past 40 years, the Supreme Court
the agencies simply lacked the courage to take tough but and the lower federal courts generally have given dominant firms
necessary cases to court. When the time came to take the big considerable freedom to decide what prices to charge, what products
shot against Google, the story goes, the FTC simply choked. A to develop, and which firms to deal with. The doctrine is not entirely
still harsher assessment is that Google and other information unfavorable for the government and private plaintiffs, and plaintiffs
technology companies pressured or beguiled Congress and have won cases, such as the DOJ prosecution of Microsoft in the
the executive branch to back the enforcement agencies off. late 1990s, against firms for improper exclusion. For the most part,
defendants enjoy a broad range of discretion and face substantially
For advocates of a more powerful enforcement toward less fear of successful challenge under US antitrust doctrine than they
dominant firms, the antidote to the condition described above do under the case law of the European Union. The FTC’s leadership
is straightforward. Appoint officials with a strong taste for presumably understood this when they decided to close their Google

TWO VIEWS OF EXCLUSION: WHY THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE UNITED STATES DIVERGED ON GOOGLE 19
 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

inquiry. Had they been working in the framework of EU antitrust institutions—the DOJ and the FTC—in the antitrust enforcement
doctrine, they might have pressed ahead. domain. Their powers and jurisdiction are not congruent, but the
overlap between them is substantial.
What accounts for the difference in contemporary EU and US
doctrine? Brushing aside differences in the underlying statutes, In theory, the two institutions would fuse their complementary
commentators who call for more robust US enforcement policy capabilities in a well-integrated collaboration—for example, in
usually ascribe the constraints in US doctrine to conquest by the a common effort to define the appropriate direction of doctrine
Chicago School. By contrast, EU courts have refused to embrace and policy development, and devising a common plan to achieve
a number of important Chicago School precepts, and EU doctrine that development. An integrated program would consider, for
tolerates a wider range of enforcement as a result. example, when cases might best be pursued through the FTC’s
administrative adjudication process and which are best suited for
There is no doubt that Chicago School ideas have influenced litigation in the federal courts. The agencies might formulate a
US doctrine, but they are not the sole force that accounts for the common research plan to exploit the FTC’s distinctive information
permissive quality of rules governing dominant firm conduct. The gathering powers. At a minimum, the agencies would cooperate
modern Harvard School of Phillip Areeda and Donald Turner has intensively to build a vision of how the United States law and
been no less influential. Beginning in the 1970s, Areeda and Turner policy should deal with dominant firms.
developed the idea that the US form of private rights of action—
with mandatory treble damages, jury trials, class actions, joint and These seemingly obvious steps are largely missing in the US
several liability, and asymmetric fee shifting—posed a serious system. As a system, the DOJ and the FTC operate decidedly
threat of overdeterrence, especially in monopolization cases. They inside the production possibilities frontier. The US agencies
proposed several measures to counteract the perceived overreach cooperate effectively from time to time on major projects, such as
of private rights, including the elevation of liability standards to the refinement of their horizontal merger guidelines.
make it more difficult for plaintiffs to establish an infringement.
These episodes are exceptional rather than routine. Senior
The ideas of the modern Harvard School resonate in modern DOJ officials have recounted to me the negotiations with the
US antitrust jurisprudence, especially in the judicial opinions of FTC to determine which agency would take responsibility for
Stephen Breyer, who taught with Areeda at Harvard and frequently investigating single-firm conduct issues relating to Google.
draws on Areeda’s scholarship. In monopolization decisions and The two agencies agreed that DOJ would review mergers
in other areas of antitrust law, the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence involving Google, and the FTC would address the non-merger
reflects Areeda’s views about private rights and overdeterrence. matters. Before settling on this division of labor, DOJ carefully
This concern has led the court to establish demanding liability weighed the possibilities for bringing a monopolization case
tests (for example, the recoupment requirement in predatory and concluded that such a case would be problematic. It did not
pricing cases) and to raise evidentiary and pleading requirements convey this assessment or the reasoning that supported it to the
that plaintiffs must satisfy to establish the fact of concerted action. FTC. Instead, in one telling, a senior manager in the Antitrust
Division front office told me, with evident glee, how the FTC
Examined closely, the DNA of modern US antitrust doctrine is had seized the opportunity to pursue a matter that DOJ regarded
a double helix, one strand coming from the Chicago School and as a dead end. The spirit of the comment was akin to the delight
a second strand from the modern Harvard school. Enforcement of a sports franchise that has pulled off a trade that exploits the
initiatives that abandoned Chicago School learning and relied miscalculation of a rival franchise by gaining a better player for
instead on more expansive notions of antitrust liability would a weaker player.
still bump into the Supreme Court’s concerns about private rights
of action. To treat the Chicago School as the source of doctrinal Future extensions of US doctrine and enforcement will depend
conservatism in the United States is to miss a major obstacle to upon the ability of the US agencies to move from reluctant, as-
expansion. Unless these concerns can be assuaged, US doctrine needed cooperation toward a truly willing integration of effort.
will continue to feature skepticism about broad concepts of The starting point would be to formulate a common view about
liability in monopolization cases. Put another way, were it not for the appropriate boundaries of monopolization doctrine and to
judicial apprehensions about overdeterrence in private cases, US devise a litigation program to achieve them. A key foundation
monopolization doctrine would more closely approximate abuse for this common effort would be a careful analysis of what has
of dominance doctrine in the European Union, and US enforcers worked in the past, and what has not—to appreciate, for example,
would have more success in challenging single-firm conduct. the role that smaller cases play in creating doctrinal principles
that become valuable tools for building larger cases in the future.
THE IMPERFECT FEDERAL PARTNERSHIP These would be useful steps in devising an enforcement strategy,
to set priorities to implement the strategy, to select helpful cases,
The US federal enforcement regime is the oldest and most and to assess the effects of completed matters as a way of doing
important experiment in diversification. Congress placed two the next round more effectively.

TWO VIEWS OF EXCLUSION: WHY THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE UNITED STATES DIVERGED ON GOOGLE 20
 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

William E. Kovacic is the Global Competition Professor of Law and Policy at

the George Washington University Law School and Visiting Professor at the Dick-
son Poon School of Law at King’s College London. He is a Non-executive Director
of the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority. From 2001 to 2004
he was the General Counsel at the Federal Trade Commission, served as a com-
missioner from 2006 to 2011, and chaired the agency from March 2008 to March
2009. The views expressed here are the author’s alone.

TWO VIEWS OF EXCLUSION: WHY THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE UNITED STATES DIVERGED ON GOOGLE 21
 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

CHAPTER 5

SOLUTIONS TO
THE THREATS
OF DIGITAL
MONOPOLIES
by Sandra Matz, Guy Rolnik, and Moran Cerf

R
ecent tidal waves of scandals and public upheavals have focuses not only on the merits of these digital platforms but
shed light on the potential perils and risks of digital also on the potential threats  they pose to markets, financial
monopolies such as the five Silicon Valley giants: institutions, and democratic processes (3).
Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. Examples
such as the foreign meddling in the US election via large- Some point to the mere size, power, and unregulated conduct
scale advertising campaigns on Facebook (1), or the alleged of these digital monopolies. Others focus on the unprecedented
abuse of market power by Google resulting in one of the scale and speed with which personal data is collected and used
largest antitrust fines  ever levied by the European Union in the context of prediction algorithms, an omniscient, opaque
(€2.42 billion, [2]), are frequently echoed in mainstream media. machinery that threatens to erode the very foundation of privacy
(4). Still others highlight the ability of digital monopolies to
In 2017 alone, the five Silicon Valley giants have added nearly control much of our attention, which allows them to dictate
a trillion dollars to their aggregate value, which is now more which content we are exposed to and to influence our behavior.
than double the value of the largest seven banks in the world. In In this “economy of attention,” users’ eyeballs have become
conjunction with the increased popularity of those platforms— the main commodity traded (5, 6). The price for ads on YouTube
the number of users ranges from 310 million for Amazon to or Facebook, for example, ranges from a few cents to several
2.2 billion for Facebook and Google—the public discourse dollars depending on the specificity of the target audience.

22
 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

An analysis of the academic and public discourse highlights marketing have shown that exposure to content at a rate of as little
eight key challenges posed by the digital monopolies: as  three views  is sufficient to generate a conscious awareness
of a brand (15), whereas  ten views can yield unconscious drive
1. Risk of data breaches. A security breach of any of or preference for a product (16). Studies in psychology (17)
the digital monopolies could result  in Exabytes of users’ most and  neuroscience (18) show that one change people’s behavior,
vulnerable information being publicly exposed (7). Besides the both short-term and long-term, by influencing their preferences or
risk of irreparable damage to people’s reputation, private lives, altering their neural pathways. Beyond behavior changes due to
and identity (as in, e.g., the “Ashley Madison” case (8)), such a content, works in  neuroscience are suggesting that the effects
breach could result in unprecedented damage to our economy (as of digital content on our brain is not limited to the time of exposure
in, e.g., the “Sony Pictures” case (9)) and our political standing but also have addictive attributes that resemble chemical addiction
(as in, e.g., “Wikileaks Cablegate” (10)). Importantly, a security to substances (19, 20). Finally, studies in psychology are showing
collapse of that nature might only be the start of a series of follow- that the adverse effects of the time spent on digital platforms are
up breaches. A hack of Google’s Gmail, for example, could translated to increases in depression and other negative psychological
allow the perpetrators to obtain a user’s bank account password outcomes (21).
through the “forgot password” functionality, and ultimately lead
to a collapse of businesses and industries (e.g. banking, taxation, 4. Lack of transparency. Currently, the usage of personal
weapon silos, etc.). Compared to what was deemed a “too big to user information by corporations suffers from a great deal of
fail” state when a handful of banks collapsed in 2008, such a crisis obscurity. Users are often unaware of the data being collected, shared,
could be unparalleled. Although the digital monopolies employ or used by the digital monopolies, preventing them from speaking
talented security teams to prevent such hacks, the public has no up publicly and demanding transparency. Moreover, even if users
guarantee that a skillfully deployed attack (e.g., by another nation- have knowledge of the data usage, they have little power to control
state, powerful underground organization, or simply a disgruntled it. Essentially, we are limited to a binary choice to either agree to the
employee) would not be successful. Even with the best efforts terms of the digital platforms or not use the services at all.
of the digital monopolies—which often heavily depend on the
priorities of high-ranking leaders in the organization—societies 5. Political influence. Unregulated media giants can
should hence operate under the assumption that the data held by involuntarily  influence  the outcomes of democratic processes,
the digital monopolies could be leaked at any point in time. with users being overexposed to certain news due to hyper-
personalization in so-called “echo-chambers” (22), foreign
2. Data control.  The concentration of unprecedented countries  swaying public opinion via large-scale advertising
amounts of behavioral user data may become the most precise and purchases (1), voter-profiling companies using psychographic
effective tool for targeted marketing. Our digital footprint reveals a profiling techniques to  manipulate voter opinion through
lot more about us than first meets the eye: it conveys information disinformation and fake news (23), or duopolies such as Google and
about our preferences, our habits, and our psychological traits (4, Facebook effectively controlling the world of online advertising,
11).  Recent research, for example, shows that targeting user which can turn them into key political players and severely restrict
segments with advertising messages tailored to their psychological diversity of thought (24).
profiles (e.g., their extroversion level) significantly increases clicks
and purchases (12). While the ability to target individuals of a Taken together, the aforementioned challenges make the digital
certain behavioral, sociodemographic, and psychological profile monopolies too big to fail. The breakdown of any of the digital
might not pose an immediate threat in the context of advertising monopolies is likely to have severe consequences that would harm
consumer goods, there are many other contexts in which overly humanity in unprecedented ways. At the same time, they might also
precise targeting could hurt the most vulnerable members of society. be too big to manage. Facebook, for example, only understood in
Being able to target “homosexual individuals living in a specific hindsight how their advertising platform had been abused by third
zip code,” for example, could turn out to be lethal in a number of parties to breach their data laws and sway the voting intentions of
countries around the world. The same is true for targeting people millions of users (23). Together with other threats posed by the
with an addictive personality with gambling ads, or an unsuspecting digital monopolies—including the decline of trusted media outlets,
low-income family with a subprime mortgage offering. a growing lack of competition, and a potential waste of talent—the
risk of losing control over such companies that are too big to fail
3. Attention as currency. The majority of online social requires a rethinking and redesign of the digital economy.
networks—be it Facebook, Snapchat, or YouTube—are designed
and built to encourage individuals to spend as much time and
resources within the platform as possible. While this is no different
than other media channels, like TV, online social networks have SOLUTIONS
far advanced their capabilities to manipulate and prey on users’
weaknesses, turning “user-oriented” services into addictive, The digital revolution is not the first time governments and
time-wasting traps (13, 14). Recent work in neuroscience and societies had to respond to dramatic dislocations of the economy.

SOLUTIONS TO THE THREATS OF DIGITAL MONOPOLIES 23

 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

In fact, prior technological shifts such as the Industrial Revolution which the digital economy is heading needs to change in order
required substantial changes in regulatory frameworks as well. to create inclusive growth and shared prosperity, it is less
Yet, history tells us that the responses to structural changes clear how. The enormous power concentrated within current
in the economy tend to arrive late due to the resistance of the digital monopolies, the complexity of the digital world,
actors that benefit from the status quo. It took over six decades the rapid development of new technologies, and a growing
to regulate the tobacco industry, for example, and the number of political instability make the endeavor to shift directions a
casualties of this slow response is unparalleled. Similarly, the difficult task.
breakup of Bell Systems—which ultimately yielded a prosperous
tech industry that benefited from the ramifications of regulatory Moreover, it is not clear who should lead this change.
processes—was met with strong initial resistance. Below we offer a set of players that we believe should carry
the torch in providing solutions (in order of importance). Each
The emergence and rapid growth of digital monopolies of these players has their own incentives for contributing to a
suggests the response to the threats posed by these platforms needs resolution, and as such the involvement of each of these players
to be notably faster. While it seems clear that the direction in comes with both advantages and disadvantages (see Table 1).

Table 1. Pros and Cons for Each Sector’s Involvement.

Player Pros Cons

• The companies to be regulated have stronghold on the
government (and both parties, historically, benefited
from the financial backing of those companies during
• Competition distributes power and decreases politi- elections).
cal stronghold on lawmakers
• Other nation-states benefit from regulation within the
• Competition encourages innovation. U.S. (i.e. China).

• It works! Prior examples of government pressure tar- • Digital monopolies bring a lot of money to the econo-
Government geting companies like AT&T, Microsoft, IBM, etc. has my and breaking them may seem like self-flagellating of
given rise to numerous new technologies and indus- ‘national treasures’.
tries in the past.
• The data collected by digital monopolies is also used by
• Antitrust is the most “free market” regulation – it the government for national security purposes.
ultimately relies on competition and market forces
and not bureaucratic discretion. • Governments are often inefficient and slow.

• Government intervention can be political (i.e., govern-

ments can pick and choose winners).
• The power and influence of traditional media out-
lets is shrinking rapidly. Supporting other players in • The digital monopolies effectively control the media dis-
breaking digital monopolies is hence an opportunity tribution to-date. The current media channels are using
to strengthen their own power. those platforms heavily.
Media • The media is fast and can distribute information al- • Concerted campaigns against the monopolies may
most in real-time and at scale. compromise the trust of the population in the media as
it may be perceived as self-serving act due to the finan-
• Traditional media outlets still constitute a trust- cial competitiveness between the platforms.
worthy source of information.
• It is in these corporations’ self-interest to help mit-
igate the power of those competitions since the
monopolization of data on the behavior of billions • Requires spending money, in the present, for potential
of consumers gives the digital monopolies unprece- future benefits.
dented advantage in various industries.
Large Cor- • Risk of the “tragedy of commons” where one defectors
porations • Big corporations often have considerable resources siding with the monopolies will rip the benefits of part-
(financial, networks) that can be deployed almost in- nering with those big digital monopolies to eliminate
stantaneously. other large corporations.
• Other corporations can act as role models to demon-
strate the value of data transparency to consumers.

SOLUTIONS TO THE THREATS OF DIGITAL MONOPOLIES 24

 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

• The resulting boost in innovation will benefit them.

• The public hostility towards them will decrease.

• The public will potentially reward them for a noble • No one likes to give up power.
act.
• Short-term financial losses.
• Better to have self-regulation than the alternative,
Digital which is ‘government takeover (all the power will go • Potential long-term financial losses and risk of losing out
to competitors that do not adhere to such standards.
Monopolies to politicians rather than the public). Simply put, the
alternative is not nothing – it is the government run- • The uncertainty about how such changes are going to
ning Facebook. impact the competitiveness and success of the compa-
ny in the long-run might make it harder to attract and
• Absence of action effectively leads to a less produc-
retain the best talent.
tive society as a whole, which ultimately affects those
companies as well. Helping society be more produc-
tive can help increase welfare for everyone (fighting
diseases, generating knowledge, etc.)
• Aligned with the hackers’ etiquette and ideology
(Hackers are civilians who typically work for the • The tools and techniques used by hackers are potentially
greater good of the public in fighting big corpora- reckless and have the potential of having some collateral
tions that violate the public trust) damages in the way to the optimal solution.
Hackers • Impartial and unbiased by the power dynamics of • Hackers are difficult to control
digital monopolies
• Solutions should be agreed upon by more than just one
• Operating outside of standard regulatory systems, individual or small group of individuals
they can act extremely fast and efficiently.
• Academics are largely unbiased by the power dy-
namics of digital monopolies. • Academic research is typically slow.

• Academic research is (mostly) impartial. The aca- • Academics usually have far fewer resources (e.g. access
demic maxim is to generate objective knowledge to data, power, money, and even talent) than industry
and truths. leaders, and therefore often lag behind technological de-
Academics velopments introduced by digital monopolies.
• Many of the senior employees of the digital monop-
olies are former academics, with the same think- • Solutions provided by academics might not always be
ing, mentality and ways of solving problems which fully impartial, because research is increasingly funded
means that they have better understanding of each by industry leaders.
other’s methods.
• Favoring long-term interests over short-term benefits is
challenging, and we know that people often do not act in
• As the “product” being commoditized the users have their best self-interest (e.g. the reward of being connect-
the ultimate power over digital monopolies. ed to our friends, the risk of being excluded from a social
circle, the convenience of finding information we need
• Users are the ones affected by current practices of instantly all make the immediate gratification outweigh
Users digital monopolies, so they should have a say in what the problems)
the future looks like
• Users might not have good insights and knowledge of
• Democratic process in which everybody (not just the what is happening behind the scenes of the digital mo-
political or academic elites) are involved. nopolies (e.g. what data is being collected, and how it is
being used). And even if they do so, they are unlikely to
have the power and technical capacity to change it.

SOLUTIONS TO THE THREATS OF DIGITAL MONOPOLIES 25

 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

1. GOVERNMENT data ownership and control to users, making it easy for them
to switch to a competing platform if the current service is
Governments have the most power in regulating and standing unsatisfactory.
up to digital monopolies. Within their arsenal lie the abilities to
regulate, fine, breakup, and change the course of monopolies in Third,  the government could force public hearings with
ways that benefit the public and increase overall prosperity (for a the heads of the monopolies. This will give the public a chance
discussion in the context of the tobacco industry and Bell Systems, to transparently review and discuss the strategies employed by
see 25, 26, 27). Governments can do so by employing the broad those digital monopolies.
array of tools used to combat monopolies in other domains.
Fourth, the government could mandate the equivalent of
First and foremost, the government can employ  antitrust a quarterly “financial disclosure” of “data usage.” Com-
laws using approaches employed to combat telecom monopolies, panies, in this case, would be obliged to inform every user
Internet and media monopolies, and even consumer-packaged about their “effective market value to the platform”—that is,
goods cartels in the last few decades. The same ruling that was the amount the user is worth to the company. This will create
used in the Bell Labs case (see  Box 1), for example, could be higher data transparency for both users and the media, and
used to breakup Google into separate corporations that are not provide a basis for users to decide whether they would like to
allowed to share user base, data, or resources (e.g., “Gmail,” continue using the service as is or whether they would like to
“Maps,” “DoubleClick,” and “YouTube”). change their agreement. For example, if a user learns that her
value to, say, Facebook is $100 per quarter, she could choose
Second, the government could actively  encourage to pay $100 and ask not to have her information shared with
competition.  It can do so by forcing digital platforms to give anyone.

BOX 1

As an example of the merits and power of regulation in taming digital and tech monopolies
one can look at past cases such as the breakup of Bell Systems and AT&T. The dismantling of
those two giants has led to the fostering of innovation that has enriched the tech world and
that drove much of Silicon Valley’s growth. The involvement of the government in the regu-
lation of those companies has forced them to make many of their patents open to the public
(e.g., the TV RCA protocol, which greatly pushed the enhancement of the television market,
enabling cables, DVDs, and a variety of additional high-quality protocols) and expanded
the television marketing greatly. The two cases have been extensively discussed by scholars
in the context of successful antitrust regulation, which led to a flourishing of innovation, as
quoted in the following statement from Intel co-founder, Gordon Moore (25):

“The most important development for the commercial semiconductor

industry (…) was the antitrust suit filed against the Bell Systems. (…) This
started the growth of ‘Silicon Valley’” (26)

Or, in the case of AT&T:

“[AT&T licensing policy shaped by antitrust policy] remains as one of the
most unheralded contribution to economic development—possibly far
exceeding the Marshall plan in terms of the wealth generation capability it
established abroad and in the United States” (27)

This, in addition to the forceful breakup and the patents licensing gave birth to corporations
like Intel, and the development of the Linux system that many of today’s technological plat-
forms operate with.

SOLUTIONS TO THE THREATS OF DIGITAL MONOPOLIES 26

 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

Governments have the most power in regulating and standing up to

digital monopolies. Within their arsenal lie the abilities to regulate, fine,
breakup, and change the course of monopolies in ways that benefit the
public and increase overall prosperity.

Fifth, the government could  generate the equivalent of a evidence-based policy, academics are therefore tasked not only
third-party auditing system for the digital monopolies. Similar with generating knowledge but also with communicating the
to the way in which the government requires banks to have implications of their findings effectively.
“penetration tests” conducted by hackers who report the results to
a third party, the government could introduce auditing protocols 4. USERS
for digital monopolies. Such a mandate is likely to both improve
the platforms’ security, and alleviate doubts about the handling The use of most digital devices and services is voluntary.
of personal data. For example, questions such as whether one’s Users are not forced to browse Facebook for hours a day, or to
data is actually deleted when requested, or merely “marked as carry smartphones wherever they go. Taking a libertarian view,
deleted” in the database will be answered. one can hence argue that a large part of the responsibility lies
with the user. In fact, users have many levers to impact the
behavior of digital monopolies:

2. MEDIA
• Requesting a report of the personal data
The media play a central role in setting the stage, signaling, businesses hold
and incentivizing the other players discussed herein. The media • Implementing parental control features to regulate
are responsible for raising awareness about digital monopolies, for kids’ social media usage
exposing the risks they pose to the very fabric of our institutions
• Checking the veracity of information using more
and democracy, and for covering and explaining the underlying than one news source
motivations of the different players in a way that makes them
accessible to the public. In fact, the media have the power to create • Updating privacy settings and restricting a
company’s access and usage of one’s data
social norms that can support and encourage other players (civil
servants, regulators, corporates, hackers, etc.) to operate effectively. • Engaging in public civil response (e.g.,
In addition, media function as a reliable and trustworthy source of demonstrations, voting) to resist monopolization.
investigative information and provide a refuge for whistleblowers
who are an essential part of the current checks and balances system. As a rule of thumb users should realize that, “If you’re not
paying for it, you are the product being sold to someone else.”
This will help guide their behavior and potentially navigate the
choice of solutions given the complacent attitudes currently
3. ACADEMICS prevalent among users (28).

Academics are often considered the torchbearers of knowledge

generation and change. As such, they can systematically develop
solutions to alleviate and overcome the problems generated by 5. HACKERS/ANARCHISTS
digital monopolies. Academics can provide objective research
on the consequences of the digital economy and the economy of Given that digital monopolies derive their power from
attention. Given that the digital economy is both affected by and is collecting, storing, and processing large amounts of user data,
in turn affecting many aspects of our lives, the academic response the skills possessed by hackers and anarchists of controlling
will require a cross-disciplinary approach that includes expertise and accessing data could support regulators in auditing digital
from areas such as the computer sciences, economics, political monopolies more efficiently. In fact, the domain-specific skills
science, psychology, sociology, communications, and others. possessed by hackers often surpass those nurtured within the
digital monopolies themselves. As such, hackers can identify
Importantly, this research will need to be communicated in flaws in the digital monopolies’ security and data utilizations,
a way that makes it easily accessible to the other stakeholders alert the public about dishonest behaviors, and expose
discussed in this section (e.g., the general public or policymakers). misconducts. Additionally, they can create monitoring tools that
In order to contribute to an informed public discourse and will allow the public to gain a better understanding of and control

SOLUTIONS TO THE THREATS OF DIGITAL MONOPOLIES 27

 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

over how their data is being used by the digital monopolies. For platforms, or from excessive/addictive usage. Apple phones,
example, hackers could develop tools that help parents regain for example, could not only include tools to help users monitor
control over the use of digital services by their children, a task their health (e.g., by counting steps, or measuring heart rate), but
that is increasingly difficult to do. In their constant fight for user also offer tools that allow users to easily quantify their digital
attention, the digital monopolies currently have no incentive to addiction (e.g., by visualizing how much time was spent on
provide such a tool. Many hackers, on the other hand, follow an Facebook, Google, etc.)
ideology that forces businesses to behave responsibly, and thus
appear to be ideally suited to develop such aids.

7. THE DIGITAL MONOPOLIES

THEMSELVES
6. OTHER CORPORATE GIANTS
While the incentive for the digital monopolies to sustain their
While potentially less obvious than the government and the current business model seems reasonable, scholars argue that it is
media, big corporations from adjacent industries could turn out in fact in their own self-interest to become more transparent and
to be equally powerful in challenging digital monopolies as they to provide open access to their data, while keeping the analytics
can support the government and other parties in standing up to algorithms as their intellectual property alone. As the digital
the digital monopolies. They could do so by financially backing monopolies originally worked under ethos of audacious social
regulatory processes and campaigns, and by also demonstrating missions such as “do no evil,” “connect the world,” or “organize
the need for transparency through sharing data themselves, the world’s information,” returning to this ethos and operating
making it a real alternative for consumers. under the premise of transparency and user control is likely to
increase—rather than decrease—the public usage of and trust
It is in other corporations’ own best interest to help in their services. Importantly, by maintaining the algorithms
mitigate the power of digital monopolies. This is because the to analyze the data while giving users the control over the data
monopolization of data on the behavior of billions of consumers may still retain a strong business model that creates a positive
gives the digital monopolies an unprecedented advantage in feedback loop between consumer interest/trust and profitability
various industries—even ones that currently do not actively (e.g., 31).
compete with the monopolies. For example, while nobody
currently perceives Google as a potential competitor in the real
estate brokerage market, if Google decided to enter this market
in the future the sheer amount of data it holds on individuals SUMMARY
from all over the world would make it a leading competitor
instantly. Hence, corporate giants across disciplines may want The technological advances introduced by the digital
to use traditional market tools to combat the growing power of monopolies allow billions of people around the world to
digital monopolies. This movement is already  underway and connect with one another and have therefore been crucial in
may prove successful and efficient (29, 30). driving  access to information  (32, 33), increasing economic
productivity and contributing to political stability (34). As such
Smartphone manufacturers could play a special role in they have the potential both to promote and to undermine societal
standing up to the digital monopolies since they act both well-being. In order to reap the benefits of the technological
as competitors and as enablers of the platforms. While the advances provided by the digital monopolies while reducing
smartphone manufacturers might seem to belong to the same their adverse effects on individuals and society, it is necessary
business category as the digital monopolies, their business model to develop and employ solutions that mitigate the dangers of
is not identical. Their income is driven by product purchases unregulated digital monopolies.
rather than advertising, which allows them to side with the
public interest. Accordingly, they can provide consumers with It has not escaped our notice that whereas it took many
better tools to protect themselves from misuse of data on digital decades to respond to the threats posed by industries like the

It is in other corporations’ own best interest to help mitigate the power

of digital monopolies. This is because the monopolization of data on
the behavior of billions of consumers gives the digital monopolies an
unprecedented advantage in various industries.

SOLUTIONS TO THE THREATS OF DIGITAL MONOPOLIES 28

 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

tobacco industry, the speed with which technology develops attention. Sci Rep 2:335.
now calls for a much faster and coordinated response by all 6. Simon HA (1971) Designing organizations for an
the aforementioned players. It is difficult to anticipate which information-rich world.
solution is going to be most effective. In fact, the best solution for 7. Carson C (2014) How Much Data Does Google Store?
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smoke” (that your smoking is hurting me). Similar secondhand 8. Gibbons-Neff T (2015) Thousands of .mil addresses
effects could be claimed for the attention economy. One person’s potentially leaked in Ashley Madison hack. Washington
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(2010) P02-232-Social network addiction: a new clinical
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 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

CHAPTER 6
THE
UNPRECEDENTED
POWER OF DIGITAL
PLATFORMS
TO CONTROL
OPINIONS AND
VOTES by Robert Epstein

I
n recent years, my associates and I have quantified the extent discovery of what we called the search engine manipulation
to which online digital platforms can shift opinions and effect (SEME), which is one of the largest behavioral effects
votes without people knowing this is occurring and without ever identified. The study showed that when undecided voters
leaving a paper trail. Randomized, controlled experiments conduct online searches in which one candidate is favored in
conducted with more than 10,000 people from 39 countries search rankings—that is, when high-ranking search results link
suggest that one company alone—Google LLC, which controls to web pages that make that candidate look better than his or
about 90 percent of online search in most countries—has likely her opponent—the preferences of those voters shift dramatically
been determining the outcomes of upwards of 25 percent of toward the favored candidate after just one search—by up to 80
the national elections in the world for several years now, with percent in some demographic groups.
increasing impact each year as Internet penetration has grown.
This shift occurs because of the enormous level of trust
people have in Google’s search results, which people believe are
entirely impartial, unlike what they see on television or read in
THE SEARCH ENGINE MANIPULATION newspapers. Our research also demonstrates that this belief is
EFFECT (SEME) reinforced by a daily regimen of operant conditioning in which
routine searches for simple facts invariably generate the correct
In a study published in the Proceedings of the National result in the highest-ranking search position. The strong trust in
Academy of Sciences USA  (PNAS) in 2015, we reported the high-ranking search results impacts what happens when people

31
 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

conduct a search on a complex issue on which they are trying things, that pro-Clinton bias was especially evident in Google’s
to formulate an opinion or make a decision: where to holiday, search results, that bias appeared in all ten search positions on
what kind of car to purchase, or even whom to vote for. When the first page of search results, and that pro-Clinton bias was
conducting an online search for information about such matters, greater for some demographic groups than for others.
people put inordinate trust in material that is ranked high in search
results; indeed, 50 percent of all clicks go to the top two search That Google sometimes favors one cause, candidate, or
results. We have also demonstrated that the shift in opinions and company in its search results is also indicated by a two-year
voting preferences increases when people are exposed repeatedly investigation by the European Commission. In June 2017, the
to differing search results favoring one viewpoint. Commission concluded that Google had systematically favored
its comparison shopping service in its search results and that such
We have now demonstrated the power of search rankings to favoritism did great damage to competing services. As a result,
shift votes and opinions in the context of four national elections: the Commission levied a $2.7 billion fine against Google, which
the 2010 federal election in Australia, the 2014 Lok Sabha election Google has since paid. Both Russia and India have also levied fines
in India, the 2015 general election in the United Kingdom, and against Google for displaying search results that favor Google’s
the 2016 election for US president. One disturbing finding of products and services over those of its competitors. US courts,
such research is that people show little or no awareness that they guided in part by Section 230 of the Communications Decency
are viewing biased search rankings—even when those rankings Act, have meanwhile given Google carte blanche to rank search
are strongly biased. In the Lok Sabha experiment, conducted results any way it pleases—even to demote or remove competing
with more than 2,000 undecided voters throughout India during companies from its search results. Some courts have ruled that
the voting process, 99.5 percent of the participants in the study Google is simply exercising its “free speech” rights by doing so.
showed no awareness that they were seeing biased rankings.
SEME’s virtual invisibility makes it an especially disturbing
and dangerous form of manipulation, because when people are
unaware that they are being influenced, they tend to believe that THE SEARCH SUGGESTION EFFECT
they are making up their own minds. Because search rankings (SSE) AND OTHER SOURCES OF ONLINE
are ephemeral and, more and more, customized to the tastes of INFLUENCE
the individual, they also leave no paper trail, making them nearly
impossible for authorities to trace. Perhaps even more disturbing, In addition to continuing our research on SEME (which has
we now know that that the few people who can detect bias in now been replicated by at least two other research groups), we are
search results shift even farther in the direction of the bias— investigating four similar effects—all of which, like SEME, shift
possibly because they see that bias as a form of social proof. opinions dramatically, invisibly, and without leaving a paper trail.

We will soon (in late April, 2018) be presenting the results of

a new series of experiments demonstrating the power of what we
EVIDENCE FOR FAVORITISM IN SEARCH are calling the “search suggestion effect” (SSE). The experiments
RESULTS show the power that search engines have to begin shifting
opinions from the very first character people type into a search
Is there any evidence that Google’s search rankings bar. They show, specifically, that search suggestion manipulations
are  actually biased toward one candidate or another? Early in can shift a 50/50 split among people who are undecided on an
2016 my team and I developed and deployed a system for issue to an astounding 90/10 split after just one search—again,
tracking ephemeral search results on Google, Bing, and Yahoo, with no one being aware that he or she has been manipulated.
and we used this system to track election-related searches for They also explain, among other things, why Google was
nearly six months before the November election. Using this new apparently  suppressing negative search suggestions for Hillary
system, we were able to preserve the results of 13,207 election- Clinton during the summer of 2016. Our experiments show that
related searches, along with the 98,044 web pages to which the a single negative (“low valence”) search suggestion can attract 10
search results linked. From this archive we learned, among other to 15 times as many clicks as a neutral or positive suggestion—

We learned, among other things, that pro-Clinton bias was especially

evident in Google’s search results, that bias appeared in all ten search
positions on the first page of search results, and that pro-Clinton bias
was greater for some demographic groups than for others.

THE UNPRECEDENTED POWER OF DIGITAL PLATFORMS TO CONTROL OPINIONS AND VOTES 32

 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

yet another example of what is known in several academic fields systems like this in place, it will be possible to detect online
as “negativity bias.” Differentially suppressing negative search threats swiftly, with reports issued as appropriate to journalists,
suggestions for one candidate (or one cause, or one company) is, legislators, regulators, law enforcement agencies, and antitrust
it turns out, an easy way of directing millions of people toward investigators.
positive information about the candidate you support and toward
negative information about the opposing candidate. Such systems, I believe, will force online monopolies to be
accountable to the general public and, in so doing, will protect
human freedom and the democratic system of government.
Without such systems in place, I fear that both democracy and
PROTECTING USERS FROM HIGH-TECH human freedom will become little more than illusions. As British
MANIPULATION economist Kenneth E. Boulding warned in the 1950s, “A world
of unseen dictatorship is conceivable, still using the forms of
In late 2017, my associates and I published a  study showing democratic government.” Are we already living in such a world?
how alerts and warnings can be used to suppress SEME to
some extent. We do not believe, however, that alerts, warnings,
or education of any sort can suppress SEME and similar Robert Epstein is a Senior Research
manipulations completely. We also do not believe that laws,
regulations, or antitrust actions will be able to protect users Psychologist at the American Institute for
adequately from such manipulations. Legal apparatuses move Behavioral Research and Technology.
too slowly, in our view. Driven by recent revelations about the
dissemination of fake news stories and Russian-placed ads on
digital platforms before the 2016 election, some authorities are
now turning their attention toward the corporate policies and
algorithms that allowed such things to occur.

But technology moves so quickly, in our view, that regulators

and lawmakers will always be years behind the curve. Just as
we are now learning about the full power that Google has to
control opinions with its search engine, Google is moving away
from the search engine model of surveillance and control while
rapidly moving toward more powerful tech: encouraging people
to place “Home” devices in every room of their domiciles. These
new devices record sound 24/7 and give people simple answers
to their questions.

We are now in the process of quantifying the impact of giving

people those simple answers—an effect we call the “answer bot
effect” (ABE). Because Google is now providing all the content
that Siri provides to Apple customers, Google’s ability to shift
opinions, purchases, and voting preferences will continue to
expand in coming months and years, even if its search engine
becomes regulated to some extent.

We believe that the only effective way of protecting people

from the extraordinary manipulations that new technologies
are making possible is by establishing a worldwide network
of passive monitoring systems—in other words, of scaling up
the type of tracking system my team and I developed in 2016.
The European Commission recently awarded €10 million to two
consulting firms to develop a system for monitoring Google’s
search results, specifically to track compliance with Commission
orders. I am now working with colleagues from Princeton
University, UCLA, MIT, King’s College London, and elsewhere
to implement large-scale systems that will monitor a wide
range of online ephemeral stimuli, not just search results. With

THE UNPRECEDENTED POWER OF DIGITAL PLATFORMS TO CONTROL OPINIONS AND VOTES 33

 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

CHAPTER 7

PLATFORMS
AND ADJACENT
MARKET
COMPETITION:
A LOOK AT
RECENT HISTORY
by Randy Picker

I
t is rare for antitrust issues to reach public consciousness, but the as it is quite difficult to attack a dominant firm in its home market,
question of what to do, if anything, about the dominant Internet though even that might be possible if we have a leading firm in one
firms of the day has clearly done so. The GAFA, as they are market entering the market of another dominant firm.
known in Europe—Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon, and
let’s throw in Microsoft for good measure—have each achieved a Here, I look at the two most developed examples we have of the
remarkable market position in the technologies that seem to define role of antitrust in adjacent market competition in platform industries.
so much of the modern economy, especially the consumer-facing We have an extensive history for Microsoft and a now growing one for
economy. While each of these companies benefits from dynamics of Google. Both situations show the difficulty of achieving meaningful
platform economics, these firms are interestingly different and it is remedies even when antitrust violations are found.
important not to lose sight of that as we consider possible regulatory
responses to their market positions.

The rules of competition and antitrust are perhaps most TWO DECADES OF MICROSOFT
important at the point where we have competition in a market ANTITRUST
adjacent to a market held by a dominant firm, especially where there
is the promise that the adjacent market could turn into a springboard It is interesting that it is the GAFA and not the GAFAM.
for competition back into the original market. Adjacency matters Inspired by a magazine cover—Popular Electronics, January,

34
 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

1975— Bill Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft as a computer In 1997, the US government brought an action against
languages company to write the BASIC computer programming Microsoft claiming that Microsoft had breached the terms
language for the new Altair 8800 personal computer. Today’s of the 1994 consent decree by requiring computer makers
average computer user wouldn’t give the Altair 8800 even a who wanted Windows 95 to preinstall the current version of
glance and would probably be stunned to learn that this was the Internet Explorer, then IE 3.0.6 By this point, the government
beginning, but it was. That world evolved quickly and reached had a clear theory of what Microsoft was doing—Microsoft
a turning point on August 12, 1981, when IBM launched its first was acting “to thwart this incipient competition and thereby
personal computer. It wasn’t obvious then that in doing so IBM protect its operating system monopoly”—but the legal issue
would create two monopolies and yet would not end up with just turned on what the 1994 consent decree said or didn’t say
either. Intel and Microsoft both were defined by the success of and Microsoft would eventually win 2-1 in a federal appeals
the IBM PC and the clones that would follow from it. court in late June 1998.7

Microsoft’s success is even more remarkable as Microsoft But perhaps recognizing the weakness of its position on
originally sent IBM elsewhere when IBM asked Microsoft to the language of the consent decree, on May 18, 1998, the US
provide an operating system for its new computer. And IBM government filed an entirely new antitrust lawsuit against
would eventually release its new computer with three different Microsoft. The government could easily have quit at this
operating systems (bonus points if you can name the other point. It seems unlikely that the 1994 licensing case was
two). But within a decade, Microsoft was an antitrust target. seen within the government as successful. The government
The US Federal Trade Commission started investigating might not have known that it would lose the contempt case
Microsoft in 1991 and was believed to be looking at whether in June 1998, but after seven years of chasing Microsoft,
Microsoft was using its market position in operating systems to the government didn’t have much to show for its efforts.
thwart competition in adjacent markets such as those for word Of course, the Antitrust Division was used to the long haul:
processors.1 Two years later, the FTC was stalled with an even the IBM mainframe case started in January 1969, only to be
2-2 split on whether to bring an action against Microsoft.2 dismissed by the government in 1982.

But the US has two federal antitrust agencies and with the The new case focused on Microsoft’s response to the
FTC at a standstill, the US Department of Justice jumped in.3 emergence of the Internet and in particular the competitive
By July, 1994, the government announced a settlement with threat posed by Netscape Navigator. Again, the government
Microsoft that would require it to alter its licensing practices for saw Microsoft as trying to protect its position in operating
MS-DOS.4 The government believed that the settlement would systems and also attempting to extend its monopoly into the
end Microsoft’s monopoly in the operating system market, while new browser market. Bill Gates had outlined the threat that
Microsoft believed that its business would continue forward Netscape posed in his famous Internet Tidal Wave memo of
with minimal changes.5 May 26, 1995, and Microsoft had responded aggressively
to the upstart—or at least so the government’s complaint
I think the history on that one is fairly clear. The government suggested.
seemingly envisioned that new operating systems would take root
if Microsoft altered its licensing practices. This wasn’t a bizarre This was clearly a critical juncture in the platform defined
idea—again IBM released its 1981 PC with three operating by the desktop operating system. Of course, in some ways,
systems—but successful direct attacks on a dominant firm in its Microsoft had stumbled into its monopoly in operating
core market are rare. Successful attacks might be made at points systems. IBM had gone to Microsoft in the first place because
of transition in a market—think the competition in phone OSs of the hard, smart work that Gates and Allen had done in
with the rise of new touchscreen devices like the iPhone—or in building BASIC for the Altair 8800, but faced with destiny,
adjacent markets in which the position in the core market is less Microsoft had sent IBM elsewhere. It was only when IBM
important—more on that below—but nothing suggests that the came back and basically insisted that Microsoft figured out
government had that idea in mind in settling in 1994. how to cobble together MS-DOS.

1. Lawrence M. Fisher, Microsoft In Inquiry By F.T.C., New York

6. US v. Microsoft, Petition by the United States for an Order to
Times, Mar. 13, 1991, pD1.
Show Cause Why Respondent Microsoft Corp. Should Not Be
2. John Markoff, F.T.C. Stays Deadlocked On Microsoft, New York
Found in Civil Contempt, Oct. 20, 1997.
Times, July 22, 1993, pD4.
7. United States v. Microsoft Corp., 147 F.3d 935 (D.C. Cir. 1998).
3. John Markoff, Justice Department Considers Inquiry on Mi-
crosoft, New York Times, Aug. 1, 1993, p33.
4. US v. Microsoft, Civil Action No. 94-1564 (SS), Final Judg-
ment, July 15, 1994.
5. Elizabeth Corcoran, Microsoft Deal Came Down to a Phone
Call, Washington Post, July 18, 1994, pA1.

PLATFORMS AND ADJACENT MARKET COMPETITION: A LOOK AT RECENT HISTORY 35

 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

But Microsoft had succeeded in the face of the original It seems clear that the remedy did not restore Netscape
OS competition and had even successfully navigated from to the market position it would have been in had Microsoft’s
MS-DOS to Windows while IBM had tried to wrest back illegal behavior not occurred. That natural question is what
control of the PC platform with OS2 as OSs moved from more aggressive remedies might have accomplished and we can
characters to graphical user interfaces (GUIs). But the gain some purchase on that question by switching to Europe. At
Internet was clearly the future and Netscape Navigator the end of August 2001, the European Commission announced
combined with Sun Java—the middleware threat—looked that it believed that Microsoft had impermissibly tied Windows
like it might be the next step in computer operating systems. Media Player (WMP) to Windows. The concern here was not
really that this was an effort to protect Microsoft’s dominant
This was in many ways the best case for competition in position in operating systems but rather that Microsoft would
platform markets. Netscape’s market share in the browser gain a decisive advantage in the adjacent media markets.9
market had roared ahead as the browser offered an entirely
new function. Microsoft’s OS monopoly just wasn’t in the After a three-year investigation, the European Commission
way of Netscape’s organic growth. At the same time, with concluded that Microsoft had indeed violated European
a strong position established in the new market, Netscape competition law. Microsoft was fined €497 million and ordered
might have been able to fold in new functions into Navigator to offer to computer makers two versions of Windows, one with
and diminish the importance of OSs generally. That was the WMP and one without it. Microsoft didn’t have to charge a
threat that Gates had identified in his Internet Tidal Wave different price for the two OSs but giving PC makers a choice
memo. would ensure that other media player firms could bid to have
their media players distributed instead of WMP. Think of this
The government won its case in the federal district court as a subtraction remedy, as Microsoft was required to create a
and the core theory of its case was upheld on appeal even version of Windows with reduced functionality.
as the appellate court cut back on some of the government’s
theories.8 After a decade of pursuing Microsoft, the What happened? In April, 2006, Microsoft reported on how
government was finally vindicated. The theory of the case the market had embraced the new option. Over the relevant
had changed a little moving from the FTC’s 1991 theory period, roughly 35.5 million copies of the full-blown version
on how Microsoft was using its OS monopoly to distort of Windows XP were sold in Europe. And the version without
competition in adjacent markets to a theory instead of WMP? 1787 copies or roughly 0.005 percent of all sales.10 That
how Microsoft was using its OS monopoly to protect that doesn’t tell us whether there were financial payments made to
monopoly, but it was still a substantial accomplishment. OEMs, as Microsoft may have been forced to buy distribution of
WMP from PC makers and those transfers would be important,
What was the appropriate remedy? If the concern was that but the actual distribution of WMP wasn’t altered by the
Microsoft had squelched a young possible OS competitor, subtraction remedy.
how to restore that competition? That would seem like the
natural goal of an antitrust remedy. The district court had Perhaps we should have forced Microsoft to distribute
called for Microsoft to be separated into two companies, Netscape Navigator as a remedy in the US browser case. Actually,
one focused on the operating system and the other focused we tried a version of that in Europe. Think of this as an addition
on applications like Microsoft Office. Each would have remedy or a must-carry remedy. In January, 2009, the European
received a copy of Internet Explorer to distribute, though Commission set out its preliminary conclusion that Microsoft
only one of the new firms would have been allowed to was impermissibly tying Internet Explorer to Windows. Rather
develop it further. than fight that case and possibly disrupt the release of Windows
7 in Europe, Microsoft settled.
This would have been a bold remedy—Microsoft argued,
probably correctly, that in the US at least no unitary company In the settlement, Microsoft agreed to distribute something
had ever been cleaved in two as an antitrust remedy—but called the browser-choice screen in which a user turning on
there was a more basic conceptual problem. Had the remedy Windows for the first time in Europe would be presented with
been put in place before the case it seems unlikely that it a screen of five different browser choices rather than just
would have prevented the illegal behavior. MicrosoftOS Co. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Actually, a careful user would have
would have seen the same threat from Netscape Navigator noted that the screen offered the chance to scroll horizontally and
and would have replicated the behavior of the real Microsoft. that 14 different browsers were presented.
The divestiture remedy was rejected on appeal and a series
of behavioral limits were put in place to limit Microsoft’s
ability to engage in similar behavior going forward. 9. European Commission, Commission initiates additional
proceedings against Microsoft, IP/01/1232, 30 Aug 2001.
10. Microsoft News Center, Fact Sheet: Windows XP N Sales,
8. United States v. Microsoft, 253 F.3d 34 (D.C. Cir. 2001) (en banc). April 2006.

PLATFORMS AND ADJACENT MARKET COMPETITION: A LOOK AT RECENT HISTORY 36

 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

It was subsequently discovered that Microsoft had broken search results, the search version of the wisdom of crowds.
the browser-choice window when it issued the first service
pack update for Windows 7 and yet somehow that fact went But as the 1998 Brin and Page paper made clear, there was a
undiscovered for 17 months. fundamental contradiction at the core of building an advertising-
supported search engine. Consumers who would click on high-
This is not a pretty picture and it is important to see the full quality organic search results would have little reason to engage
implications. The US government started chasing Microsoft a with advertising. Indeed, if the search engine was going to try
decade after the IBM PC’s 1981 release. Much of that was wheel to get consumers to click on ads, it might have an incentive to
spinning but the government moved successfully against Microsoft degrade the quality of the organic search results. Plus bias for or
at a key competitive juncture when Netscape posed a possible threat against particular sites would be very difficult to detect.
to Microsoft’s OS position. But the remedy didn’t restore that threat
and the subsequent parallel actions in Europe suggest that a broad It was exactly that concern about bias that led to antitrust
set of available remedies might not have worked. investigations against Google in both the US and the EC. The
FTC action stalled out, but the EC investigation eventually
Two final points here. Given the theory of the Windows focused on exactly these issues of bias. On June 27, 2017, the
Media Player case in Europe, the fact that the remedy didn’t EC announced a fine of €2.42 billion against Google relating
change the distribution of WMP should have suggested that to Google’s shopping product where the central finding was
Microsoft should have been able to extend its OS monopoly into that Google had preferred its own shopping site to those of its
the media player space. The fact that that didn’t happen—that competitors.12 The EC’s decision in the Google shopping case is
everyone had Apple iPods and not Microsoft Zunes—suggests complex—215 pages single-spaced—but the core of the remedy
the important ways in which even struggling firms—and Apple is to “subject Google’s own comparison shopping service to the
Computer was that before it morphed into the Apple we know same underlying processes and methods for the positioning and
today—can compete outside the scope of dominant incumbents. display in Google’s general search results pages as those used
Apple’s new MP3 player gave it a strong market position outside for competing comparison shopping services.”13 Comparison
the dominance of Windows. shopping service neutrality as it were.

The second point of course is that Microsoft’s relative Nondiscrimination duties are quite traditional in regulated
position has eroded mainly because what was once central, the industries and common antitrust remedies. Google started
desktop computer world defined by the IBM PC standard, has implementing its interpretation of the remedy on September 27,
now been subsumed into a multi-device world defined by the 2017. Google is continuing to implement a version of its product
Internet. The actual remedy implemented in the US case is seen shopping unit as an ad on the top of particular search result pages
as having slowed down Microsoft making it less aggressive, less but now outside comparison shopping services can bid against
nimble and more lawyer-hobbled. And that may have mattered Google for the product slots as part of a standard Google auction.14
when the next threat emerged.
Google’s approach to advertising has evolved over time.
Google started with traditional impression based advertising
before switching to pay-per-click style advertising. The more to
GOOGLE AND ANTITRUST NEUTRALITY the rich, product slot ads backed by detailed up-to-the-minute
REMEDIES product inventories represents something meaningfully different
from Google’s traditional search market which is based on public
Sergey Brin and Larry Page described their Google prototype information available on the Internet. The EC understandably
in a 1998 paper that they prepared for an academic conference concluded that this was a separate market—an adjacent market
in Brisbane, Australia on the World Wide Web.11 Their new as it were—and acted to attempt to preserve competition in
search engine would be launched into a crowded field of search that market. The EC will monitor the remedy and Google’s
engines—Alta Vista, Lycos, Excite and more if you remember competitors are already complaining about it.15
your Internet history—and yet it would come quickly to dominate
the search market. The vision behind the Google prototype and 12. European Commission Press Release, Antitrust: Commis-
what would become the Pagerank patent and algorithm was sio fines Google €2.42 billion for abusing dominance as
better use of hyperlinks as a signal of website value. Google’s search engine by giving illegal advantage to own comparison
shopping service – Factsheet, 27 June 2017 (online at http://
search algorithm has evolved over time to augment that original
europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-17-1785_en.htm).
key insight with the ability to evaluate value based upon the 13. European Commission, Google Search (Shopping) Case
behavior of searchers in clicking on and not clicking on organic AT.39740, redacted public decision of Dec. 18, 2017, ¶ 700.
14. Google AdWords Blog, Changes to Google Shopping in Eu-
11. S. Brin & L. Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertex- rope, Sept. 27, 2017.
tual Web Search Engine (online at http://ilpubs.stanford. 15. FairSearch.org, Open letter to Vestager: Google remedies fail
edu:8090/361/). to comply with decision, Feb. 28, 2018.

PLATFORMS AND ADJACENT MARKET COMPETITION: A LOOK AT RECENT HISTORY 37

 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND CONCENTRATION

CONCLUSION

Platform markets are often punctuated equilibria markets:

short periods of competition followed by a market characterized
by dominance with that cycle to repeat. Schumpeterian
competition. The point at which a new cycle might start is
critical to healthy competition and the competitive spark to that
cycle will often arise in a market near or even adjacent to the
market current subject to dominance. Antitrust officials therefore
have good reason to act to try to protect that nascent competition
in these adjacent markets, as they did repeatedly for Microsoft
and have commenced doing for Google. But even when officials
have a good theory of liability, they have struggled to come up
with successful remedies. Direct regulatory remedies have been
ineffective in these examples seen in this paper, while remedies
directed at firm culture or internal transaction costs have been
perhaps more effective.

Randy Picker is the James Parker Hall

Distinguished Service Professor of Law at
the University of Chicago Law School and
Senior Fellow at the Computation Institute
of the University of Chicago and Argonne
National Laboratory

PLATFORMS AND ADJACENT MARKET COMPETITION: A LOOK AT RECENT HISTORY 38