Pinar Akman •
July 15, 2018
In its investigation into Google’s search practices, Google Search, the Commission alleges that Google abuses its dominant position on the web search market by giving systematic favourable treatment to its “comparison shopping product” (namely, “Google Shopping”) in its general search results pages.
In a US Senate Hearing in 2011, Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, stated that ‘competition is only one click away’. On 27 June 2017, the European Commission fined Google €2.42 billion for allegedly ‘abusing dominance as search engine by giving illegal advantage to own comparison shopping service’. Ruthlessly, a fine is only one click away too.
High-tech and network industries have a long history of evoking populist scrutiny. New technologies frequently disrupt incumbent, often less centralized, business models and interfere with existing relationships between sellers and consumers.
As has been rumored in the press for a few weeks, Comcast announced today that it is considering a renewed bid for a large chunk of Twenty-First Century Fox’s (Fox) assets. In December 2017, Fox’s board rejected a bid from Comcast that was some 16% higher than the one it ultimately accepted from Disney.
In 1973, Michigan Senator Philip A. Hart introduced Senate Bill 1167, the Industrial Reorganization Act, in order to address perceived problems arising from industrial concentration. The bill was rooted in the belief that industry concentration led inexorably to monopoly power.
A pair of recent, long-form articles in the New York Times Magazine and Wired UK — the latest in a virtual journalistic cottage industry of such articles — chronicle the downfall of British price comparison site and stalwart Google provocateur, Foundem, and attribute its demise to anticompetitive behavior on the part of Google.
Summary The relationship between classical liberalism and technology is surprisingly fraught. The common understanding is that technological advance is complementary to the principles of classical . . .
F. Scott Kieff •
April 19, 2018
This paper, drafted as an adjudicator’s opinion in a recent case of nearly first impression, explores an approach to aligning the strengths and opportunities . . .
Nicolas Petit •
February 7, 2018
This paper looks at whether the standard unilateral effects model can be applied to non-price competition parameters such as innovation. This question arises because competition authorities are intervening in horizontal mergers that are found to give rise to a “significant impediment to effective innovation competition” (“SIEIC”) as a result of a reduction in post-merger R&D efforts (including lower expenditure).