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Josh Wright’s Unfinished Legacy: Reforming FTC Consumer Protection Enforcement

Popular Media Josh Wright will doubtless be remembered for transforming how FTC polices competition. Between finally defining Unfair Methods of Competition (UMC), and his twelve dissents and multiple speeches . . .

Josh Wright will doubtless be remembered for transforming how FTC polices competition. Between finally defining Unfair Methods of Competition (UMC), and his twelve dissents and multiple speeches about competition matters, he re-grounded competition policy in the error-cost framework: weighing not only costs against benefits, but also the likelihood of getting it wrong against the likelihood of getting it right.

Yet Wright may be remembered as much for what he started as what he finished: reforming the Commission’s Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices (UDAP) work. His consumer protection work is relatively slender: four dissents on high tech matters plus four relatively brief concurrences and one dissent on more traditional advertising substantiation cases. But together, these offer all the building blocks of an economic, error-cost-based approach to consumer protection. All that remains is for another FTC Commissioner to pick up where Wright left off.

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Antitrust & Consumer Protection

Microsoft, the EU fine, and a browser ballot no one missed

Popular Media If a tree fell in the forest, and no one noticed… the European Commission would impose a staggering fine — and then congratulate itself for . . .

If a tree fell in the forest, and no one noticed… the European Commission would impose a staggering fine — and then congratulate itself for protecting consumers from falling trees. That’s essentially what just happened: the Commission fined Microsoft $732 million for failing to show its “browser ballot” when users installed one of its Windows 7 updates.

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Antitrust & Consumer Protection

Why Europe’s Antitrust Charges Against Google Won’t Stick

Popular Media Regulators around the world have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the way business is being done on the Internet. From Brussels to Buenos Aires, they are . . .

Regulators around the world have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the way business is being done on the Internet. From Brussels to Buenos Aires, they are most frustrated with Google, far and away the most popular search engine and advertising platform. As the company has evolved, expanding outward from its core search engine product, it has come to challenge a range of other firms and threaten their business models.

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Antitrust & Consumer Protection