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Showing 9 of 36 Results in International Antitrust
TOTM In a recent article for the San Francisco Daily Journal I examine Google v. Equustek: a case currently before the Canadian Supreme Court involving the scope of . . .
In a recent article for the San Francisco Daily Journal I examine Google v. Equustek: a case currently before the Canadian Supreme Court involving the scope of jurisdiction of Canadian courts to enjoin conduct on the internet.
In the piece I argue that…
Read the full piece here.
Regulatory Comments The Commission’s interest in protecting the privacy of its citizens is commendable.
The Commission’s interest in protecting the privacy of its citizens is commendable. This concern, however, should be well tempered by humility, and the Commission’s ultimate decision should be guided by the understanding that contemporary technology and market innovations have afforded consumers a degree of choice unparallelled in the history of the European Union. While some firms may build their products with the requirement that consumers allow them to use personal information, others will not. And when consumers defect from products that do not meet their individual mix of privacy, price, and other preferences, firms will take notice and change their behavior accordingly.
This leads to another related point: innovation moves so quickly today that uniform prescriptive regulation intended to govern the behavior of many thousands of firms and millions of consumers is doomed to frustration if not outright failure. Moreover, broad regulations meant to bring industry to heel frequently work to the benefit of incumbents, driving out smaller competitors or making entry nearly impossible, only further narrowing consumer choices and guaranteeing less than optimal results for all of society.
With that said, there are certainly actions for the Commission to take that ensure a competitive environment in which consumer interests are adequately protected. Chief among these areas would be to enact regulations that control the damaging effects of costly data localization rules. Overall, however, the Commission would do best to leave much of the implementation of privacy regulations to the individual EU members who are most in touch with the challenges and desires of their own constituents.
Popular Media Today’s Canadian Competition Bureau (CCB) Google decision marks yet another regulator joining the chorus of competition agencies around the world that have already dismissed similar . . .
Today’s Canadian Competition Bureau (CCB) Google decision marks yet another regulator joining the chorus of competition agencies around the world that have already dismissed similar complaints relating to Google’s Search or Android businesses (including the US FTC, the Korea FTC, the Taiwan FTC, and AG offices in Texas and Ohio).
A number of courts around the world have also rejected competition complaints against the company, including courts in the US, France, the UK, Germany, and Brazil.
After an extensive, three-year investigation into Google’s business practices in Canada, the CCB
did not find sufficient evidence that Google engaged in for an anti-competitive purpose, and/or that the practices resulted in a substantial lessening or prevention of competition in any relevant market.
Like the US FTC, the CCB did find fault with Google’s use of restriction on its AdWords API — but Google had already revised those terms worldwide following the FTC investigation, and has committed to the CCB to maintain the revised terms for at least another 5 years.
Other than a negative ruling from Russia’s competition agency last year in favor of Yandex — essentially “the Russian Google,” and one of only a handful of Russian tech companies of significance (surely a coincidence…) — no regulator has found against Google on the core claims brought against it.
True, investigations in a few jurisdictions, including the EU and India, are ongoing. And a Statement of Objections in the EU’s Android competition investigation appears imminent. But at some point, regulators are going to have to take a serious look at the motivations of the entities that bring complaints before wasting more investigatory resources on their behalf.
Competitor after competitor has filed complaints against Google that amount to, essentially, a claim that Google’s superior services make it too hard to compete. But competition law doesn’t require that Google or any other large firm make life easier for competitors. Without a finding of exclusionary harm/abuse of dominance (and, often, injury to consumers), this just isn’t anticompetitive conduct — it’s competition. And the overwhelming majority of competition authorities that have examined the company have agreed.
Exactly when will regulators be a little more skeptical of competitors trying to game the antitrust laws for their own advantage?
The Canadian decision mirrors the reasoning that regulators around the world have employed in reaching the decision that Google hasn’t engaged in anticompetitive conduct.
Two of the more important results in the CCB’s decision relate to preferential treatment of Google’s services (e.g., promotion of its own Map or Shopping results, instead of links to third-party aggregators of the same services) — the tired “search bias” claim that started all of this — and the distribution agreements that Google enters into with device manufacturers requiring inclusion of Google search as a default installation on Google Android phones.
On these key issues the CCB was unequivocal in its conclusions.
On search bias:
The Bureau sought evidence of the harm allegedly caused to market participants in Canada as a result of any alleged preferential treatment of Google’s services. The Bureau did not find adequate evidence to support the conclusion that this conduct has had an exclusionary effect on rivals, or that it has resulted in a substantial lessening or prevention of competition in a market.
And on search distribution agreements:
Google competes with other search engines for the business of hardware manufacturers and software developers. Other search engines can and do compete for these agreements so they appear as the default search engine…. Consumers can and do change the default search engine on their desktop and mobile devices if they prefer a different one to the pre-loaded default…. Google’s distribution agreements have not resulted in a substantial lessening or prevention of competition in Canada.
And here is the crucial point of the CCB’s insight (which, so far, everyone but Russia seems to appreciate): Despite breathless claims from rivals alleging they can’t compete in the face of their placement in Google’s search results, data barriers to entry, or default Google search on mobile devices, Google does actually face significant competition. Both the search bias and Android distribution claims were dismissed essentially because, whatever competitors may prefer Google do, its conduct doesn’t actually preclude access to competing services.
Exclusionary conduct must, well, exclude. But surfacing Google’s own “subjective” search results, even if they aren’t as high quality, doesn’t exclude competitors, according to the CCB and the other regulatory agencies that have also dismissed such claims. Similarly, consumers’ ability to switch search engines (“competition is just a click away,” remember), as well as OEMs’ ability to ship devices with different search engine defaults, ensure that search competitors can access consumers.
Former FTC Commissioner Josh Wright’s analysis of “search bias” in Google’s results applies with equal force to these complaints:
It is critical to recognize that bias alone is not evidence of competitive harm and it must be evaluated in the appropriate antitrust economic context of competition and consumers, rather [than] individual competitors and websites… [but these results] are not useful from an antitrust policy perspective because they erroneously—and contrary to economic theory and evidence—presume natural and procompetitive product differentiation in search rankings to be inherently harmful.
The competitors that bring complaints to antitrust authorities seek to make a demand of Google that is rarely made of any company: that it must provide access to its competitors on equal terms. But one can hardly imagine a valid antitrust complaint arising because McDonald’s refuses to sell a Whopper. The law on duties to deal is heavily circumscribed for good reason, as Josh Wright and I have pointed out:
The [US Supreme] Court [in Trinko] warned that the imposition of a duty to deal would threaten to “lessen the incentive for the monopolist, the rival, or both to invest in… economically beneficial facilities.”… Because imposition of a duty to deal with rivals threatens to decrease the incentive to innovate by creating new ways of producing goods at lower costs, satisfying consumer demand, or creating new markets altogether, courts and antitrust agencies have been reluctant to expand the duty.
Requiring Google to link to other powerful and sophisticated online search companies, or to provide them with placement on Google Android mobile devices, on the precise terms it does its own products would reduce the incentives of everyone to invest in their underlying businesses to begin with.
This is the real threat to competition. And kudos to the CCB for recognizing it.
The CCB’s investigation was certainly thorough, and its decision appears to be well-reasoned. Other regulators should take note before moving forward with yet more costly investigations.
Filed under: antitrust, essential facilities, european commission, exclusionary conduct, federal trade commission, ftc, international competition, Internet search, law and economics, technology, tying Tagged: Android, antitrust, canadian competition bureau, CCB, competition, European Commission, exclusionary conduct, google, search bias, tying
Regulatory Comments "The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (“TRAI”)’s tradition of regulatory humility — the “forbearance and flexibility” that has characterized its approach to telecommunications services regulation — has enabled the explosive growth of internet usage throughout India..."
“The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (“TRAI”)’s tradition of regulatory humility — the “forbearance and flexibility” that has characterized its approach to telecommunications services regulation — has enabled the explosive growth of internet usage throughout India, including an over 50% surge in the number of users of mobile internet in rural areas since 2001. But as the Authority considers regulations and rules to “ensure orderly growth… and protection of consumer interest,” it is important to keep in mind the fundamental lesson taught by decades of technology regulation throughout the world: where entrepreneurial companies are left relatively free to experiment with innovative new methods of developing and deploying technologies — particularly telecommunications technologies — consumers enjoy the largest increases in their standard of living.
The importance of humility in regulating highly innovative industries cannot be overstated. Even after decades of research, there is still much that economists cannot predict about the broad economic effects of technological innovation on economic growth and development. The unintended and unanticipated costs of preventing new methods of reaching underserved consumers can be substantial, and the consequences enormous to those in greatest need…”
“India is on the cusp of providing an economically and socially transformative service: near-ubiquitous, low-cost, high-value internet access that has the potential to create unprecedented opportunity and advantage for its citizens. The nation stands poised to increase the welfare of its poorest citizens with a rapidity seldom witnessed in human history. We strongly encourage TRAI to chart a wise course that allows for differentiated tariffs and the expanded internet access they can bring to India’s citizens.”
Written Testimonies & Filings "The Digital Single Market Strategy (“DSMS”) initiative represents a unique opportunity to unify regulation across the EU’s member states around policies that promote transparency, stability, free trade, innovation and global economic growth..."
“The Digital Single Market Strategy (“DSMS”) initiative represents a unique opportunity to unify regulation across the EU’s member states around policies that promote transparency, stability, free trade, innovation and global economic growth. As the Commission undertakes to integrate the digital economy into the EU’s single market strategy, however, care should be taken to assure that the principles driving the explosive growth of the Internet are encouraged and not suppressed.
As companies contemplate new business models, new content distribution services, new uses for data and new opportunities for valuable data exchange, it is important that regulation not create a legal environment in which valuable products are inefficiently delayed, degraded or abandoned. Effective and efficient policies flow from basic, well-established economic and legal principles that maximize welfare by, among other things, minimizing error costs, promoting innovation, encouraging voluntary and self-help remedies, prioritizing self-regulation, minimizing institutional and bureaucratic costs, and capitalizing on the incentives and informational advantages of market participants…”
“Importantly, the decision with respect to a new regulatory regime for online platforms is not made in a vacuum; rather, it is a choice between existing rules and the proposed alternatives. Justifying new rules demands a comparison to existing rules, meaning rigorous evidence not only that there is a problem, but also that any problems will be better addressed by new rules than current rules. No regulatory regime is perfect. Even if there are some identifiable problems with the current rules, that alone does not mean that any particular proposed new rules are preferable. The Commission should carefully consider existing law (like competition and consumer protection laws at both the EU and member-state levels) and whether new rules will bring the overall regulatory scheme closer to the optimal level.”
TOTM Nearly all economists from across the political spectrum agree: free trade is good. Yet free trade agreements are not always the same thing as free . . .
Nearly all economists from across the political spectrum agree: free trade is good. Yet free trade agreements are not always the same thing as free trade. Whether we’re talking about the Trans-Pacific Partnership or the European Union’s Digital Single Market (DSM) initiative, the question is always whether the agreement in question is reducing barriers to trade, or actually enacting barriers to trade into law.
Scholarship The article, written jointly by a law professor and political science professor, endeavors to explain why the United States is particularly resistant to various efforts at international harmonization of antitrust law.
Although many states have advocated for the internationalization of antitrust laws, the United States has resisted a multilateral solution. We place the conflict over antitrust laws within the larger framework of international relations and draw out some novel implications of the debate by connecting the harmonization of international economic laws with the promotion of international peace and security. The harmonization of global antitrust laws is imbued with a political dimension that confers political benefits on the United States.
By crafting institutions in which other parties must alter their domestic political structures, the United States receives a credible commitment from other states of their willingness to bear the domestic costs of adherence to the specific agreement under negotiation, helping the United States identify potential allies. Separating budding friends from probable foes is a critical task of international security, and the United States derives political benefits from international agreements in a way that transcends the substance of the agreements themselves.
Read the full paper here.
TOTM I am curious about something. AMD and Intel have been competing head to head for more than 15 years, at least since AMD released its . . .
I am curious about something. AMD and Intel have been competing head to head for more than 15 years, at least since AMD released its Intel 386 clone in the early 90s. In that time, inarguably, microprocessor prices have plumeted and processing power and other features have increased dramatically (I’m aware that we don’t know what the but-for world would look like, but these effects have been enormous).
TOTM There is an interesting profile on Intel in the WSJ. While the profile focuses on some of the technological and competitive challenges facing Intel and CEO Paul . . .
There is an interesting profile on Intel in the WSJ. While the profile focuses on some of the technological and competitive challenges facing Intel and CEO Paul Otellini, the CEO mentions the proliferation of antitrust laws across the globe, and the uncertainty associated with regulatory costs in such an environment, as one of the major potential impediments facing the company…
