As has become customary with just about every new product announcement by Google these days, the company’s introduction on Tuesday of its new “Search, plus Your World” (SPYW) program, which aims to incorporate a user’s Google+ content into her organic search results, has met with cries of antitrust foul play. All the usual blustering and speculation in the latest Google antitrust debate has obscured what should, however, be the two key prior questions: (1) Did Google violate the antitrust laws by not including data from Facebook, Twitter and other social networks in its new SPYW program alongside Google+ content; and (2) How might antitrust restrain Google in conditioning participation in this program in the future?

Read the full piece here.

I am very pleased to pass along this information about the 15th Annual Symposium on Antitrust Law on January 26th, 2012 sponsored by the George Mason Law Review, GMU Law & Economics Center, and Kelley Drye & Warren LLP.

 

The George Mason Law Review, in partnership with the George Mason University Law & Economics Center and sponsor Kelley Drye & Warren LLP, is pleased to present its 15^th Annual Symposium on Antitrust Law on January 26, 2012. The symposium, entitled “Antitrust in High-Tech Industries,” will be held in the Founders Hall Auditorium at George Mason University School of Law, located at 3301 Fairfax Drive, Arlington, Virginia.

The program will focus on the proper role of antitrust in high technology industries, including the extent to which current competition policy is adequate to address dynamic competition concerns that are prevalent in rapidly evolving sectors.  Specifically, panels will explore the application of antitrust laws to social media, mergers, online search, and online advertising.

The Keynote Address will be delivered by William Kovacic, former Chairman of the US Federal Trade Commission.

Please join us on January 26, 2012! To register, click here.

For a detailed description of the Symposium Panels, click here.

Fees:
General Admission: $150.00
Government/Academic: $50.00
Student: $50.00

Note: 5.5 CLE credit hours from the Virginia Bar Association are available for program attendees.

For more information, contact Katie Brown at [email protected] or call (703) 375-9529.

15th Annual Symposium Brochure

Speakers and Agenda:

8:00 – 8:30am            Registration and Continental Breakfast

8:30 – 8:35am             Welcome and Introduction

8:35 – 10:00am          Panel 1: Perspectives on High-Tech Antitrust

Howard Shelanski, Georgetown University Law Center

Herbert Hovenkamp, University of Iowa College of Law

George L. Priest, Yale Law School

Keith Hylton, Boston University School of Law

10:15 – 11:45pm        Panel 2: Social Media

Catherine E. Tucker, MIT Sloan School of Management

Spencer W. Waller, Loyola University, Chicago School of Law

Frank Pasquale, Seton Hall Law School

11:45 – 1:45pm          Luncheon and Keynote Address

William E. Kovacic, The George Washington University Law School

1:45 – 3:15pm             Panel 3: Mergers

Luke M. Froeb, Vanderbilt University

Thomas W. Hazlett, George Mason University School of Law

Jonathan B. Baker, American University Washington College of Law

3:30 – 4:45pm           Panel 4: Search and Online Advertising

William C. MacLeod, Kelly Drye & Warren LLP

Joshua D. Wright, George Mason University School of Law

Daniel Crane, University of Michigan Law School

Scott A. Sher, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati

4:45 – 5:00pm           Closing Remarks

5:00 – 6:00pm           Refreshments/ Reception

Location:
George Mason University School of Law
Founders Hall Auditorium
3301 Fairfax Drive
Arlington, VA 22201

For directions, click here.

Filed under: antitrust, george mason university school of law

For years the public has been clamoring for a playoff system to crown a champion in college football. Yet the geniuses at the BCS stubbornly defended—at least until now—their computer-knows-best system for inviting the two most worthy teams. By injecting doubt over the legitimacy of its invitees, the current system diminishes the meaning of the BCS title game, as evidenced by the abysmal Nielsen ratings for Monday night’s Alabama-LSU game (only 13.8 percent of U.S. television households tuned in to watch the television equivalent of paint drying) and last year’s Auburn-Oregon title game (15.3 percent). By comparison, the title game between Alabama and Texas just two years ago drew 17.2 percent of U.S. households; if this were a publicly traded firm, its shares would be falling fast.

Read the full piece here.

The web is all abuzz about possible antitrust implications concerning Google’s new personalized search (see, e.g., here and here), integrating search with Google Plus.  Here is Google’s description of “Search, plus Your World”:

We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships. We began this transformation with Social Search, and today we’re taking another big step in this direction by introducing three new features:

1. Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;
2. Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and,
3. People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.

The linked articles raising antitrust concerns largely talk about things like leveraging monopoly power in search into social networks and so forth.  The usual arguments.  For example:

By making Google+ such a large part of search — as well as Picasa — Google certainly is toeing the line of a company using monopoly to extend its reach into adjacent markets. Consider Microsoft’s moves with Internet Explorer, which was bundled with Windows starting in 1998. Microsoft used its monopoly on PC operating systems to nudge into the browser market, where Netscape had overwhelming market share lead. How is what Google is doing different?

Let’s start with the obvious differences: (1) the DOJ had to prove anticompetitive effects in Microsoft; (2) Microsoft was unable to muster up an efficiency justification.  Discussions of antitrust implications of any business practice that don’t focus on competitive effects and efficiency justifications are non-starters.

So let’s start with the most obvious thing that should come to mind when watching the integration of general search with Google Plus.   Integration!  Personalizing search results makes (at least some!) users better off.  Users that prefer non-personalized results can have them too.  But the trend toward providing a deeper, better, and different forms of answers to questions posed in search queries is not a Google-specific thing.  Its an industry thing driven by consumer preferences on the web.  When Google or Facebook or Twitter is able to integrate functions of search and social networking to create something different and demanded by consumers, that consumers enjoy and derive surplus from, this is a competitive benefit.  Competitive benefits count in antitrust because they make consumers better off.  This is very basic. But worth repeating.

The antitrust question is whether, despite these obvious efficiencies, there is plausible evidence of anticompetitive harm — that is, harm to competition rather than individual rivals like Bing, Twitter, or Facebook.  My personal view — which I’ve written about at great length here, here, and here — is that there is no such evidence.  But for now, the critical point is that antitrust analysis counts the integration of these functions in a manner satisfying consumer preferences — and it seems obvious that this integration produces results that consumers want — as an important consumer benefit.  This is a feature and not a bug of antitrust law.   Antitrust law that ignores or is biased against the efficiencies of vertical integration, or the introduction of new products integrating previously separate functions (like personalized search, or improved search results with maps), is at significant tension with economic theory and is simply not compatible with a consumer-welfare based competition regime.

Filed under: antitrust, google, Internet search, technology

Judge Ginsburg and I are working on a project for an upcoming festschrift in honor of Bill Kovacic.  The project involves the role of settlements in the pursuit of the goals of antitrust.  In particular, we are looking for examples of antitrust settlements between competition agencies and private parties — in the U.S. or internationally — involving conditions either: (1) clearly antithetical to consumer welfare, or (2) that arguably disserve consumer welfare.  In the former category, examples might include conditions requiring firms to make employment commitments.  The second category might include conditions placing the agency in an ongoing regulatory role or restricting the firm’s ability to engage in consumer-welfare increasing price or non-price competition.

I turn to our learned TOTM readership for help.  Please feel free to leave examples in the comments here — or email me.  Cites and links appreciated.

Filed under: antitrust, doj, federal trade commission, scholarship, settlements

In yesterday’s Washington Post, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius makes an impassioned plea for skeptics to reconsider the Affordable Care Act. Secretary Sebelius argues that the Act will bring down health care costs by, among other things, assisting those who cannot afford health insurance coverage. Although expanding health insurance coverage is a worthy goal, bringing more folks into the health care system could result in higher prices for health care services. The housing market provides a nice example: although subsidized mortgage rates allowed more people to own homes, more buyers eventually meant higher home prices.

Read the full piece here.

As in, “If the SEC doesn’t pull up its socks and do a serious cost-benefit analysis, it may discover that Business Roundtable has become a verb. As in, the court Business Roundtabled yet another SEC rule.”

Here.

Filed under: business, disclosure regulation

Tomorrow morning at 10:30 I’ll be on a panel at AALS discussing behavioral economics and antitrust law and policy.

The panel includes: James Cooper, Bruce Kobayashi, William Kovacic, Steve Salop, Maurice Stucke, Avishalom Tor and myself.  Its a really good group and I’m looking forward to the discussion.  Here are the session details:

The program will focus on the influence of Behavioral Economics on Antitrust Law and Policy.  Behavioral economics, which examines how individual and market behavior are affected by deviations from the rationality assumptions underlying conventional economics, has generated significant attention from both academics and policy makers. The program will feature presentations by leading scholars who have addressed how behavioral economics impacts antitrust law and policy.

In my presentation I’ll be discussing my work on the topic (co-authored with Judd Stone) and some extensions of that work.

See you there.

Filed under: antitrust, behavioral economics

I’ve been deeply saddened since I heard of the heartbreaking news about Larry. I had the privilege to be advised by Larry along my intellectual journey when studying in the US. Larry has set an example of what it means to be a passionate researcher and an enthusiastic educator, which will always remind me of how to be a professor in my lifetime.

Read the full piece here.