Antitrust Issues Raised by the Emerging Global Internet Economy
Northwestern University Law Review, Vol. 102, No. 4, p. 285, 2008
22 Pages Posted: 7 Oct 2008
Date Written: May 12, 2008
Abstract
Web-based businesses are increasingly the subject of antitrust concerns. Plaintiffs in the United States have sued eBay for tying its online payments service to its transaction service. Multiple jurisdictions in the European Community have claimed that Apple has violated the competition laws by limiting the ability of its music player to play music from competing music stores and limiting the ability of competing music players to play music purchased from its music stores. During 2007, although the U.S. Federal Trade Commission decided not to block Google's acquisition of DoubleClick after a lengthy investigation, it expressed its intent to "closely watch these markets" involved in online advertising. The web economy poses two major challenges to competition authorities. The law and economics for analyzing the multi-sided platforms that dominate the internet sector is not well developed. At the same time the web-economy is evolving very rapidly and in ways that are sure to result in antitrust complaints and investigations. Competition authorities and courts will need to exercise great care in balancing the protection of consumers from anticompetitive behavior against causing harm from interfering in complex businesses that are both rapidly moving and not fully understood.
Keywords: antitrust, web-based businesses, internet economy, web-based economy, multi-sided platforms
JEL Classification: L4, K0, O3
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
Mergers in Two-Sided Markets: An Application to the Canadian Newspaper Industry
-
Insulated Platform Competition
By Alexander White and E. Glen Weyl
-
Platform Pricing at Sports Card Conventions
By Ginger Zhe Jin and Marc Rysman
-
The First-Order Approach to Merger Analysis
By Sonia Jaffe and E. Glen Weyl
-
By Lapo Filistrucchi, Tobias J. Klein, ...
-
Estimating Platform Market Power in Two-Sided Markets with an Application to Magazine Advertising
By Minjae Song
-
Merger Simulation in a Two-Sided Market: The Case of the Dutch Daily Newspapers
By Lapo Filistrucchi, Tobias J. Klein, ...
-
By David S. Evans and Michael D. Noel
-
By David S. Evans and Michael D. Noel