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    Is Antitrust Just a Quaint Notion in the Digital Age?
    02 Nov 2020What Do You Think?

    Is Antitrust Just a Quaint Notion in the Digital Age?

    by James Heskett
    SUMMING UP: Given the US Department of Justice's new antitrust complaint against Google, is it time to revisit what defines a market monopoly in the internet era? James Heskett's readers consider the potential ramifications.
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    SUMMING UP

    Is antitrust just a quaint notion in the internet/Cloud age? What do you think?

    The lack of response to November’s column sends me a message: There appears to be less interest in antitrust issues regarding technology platforms such as Google and Apple than in traditional industries.

    As Joel put it, “Though I get the point that their behavior excludes competitors, the consumer would seem to benefit for now. What I wonder is why there is not more aggressive enforcement where the consumer is clearly being hurt, as demonstrated by excessive price rises (in) healthcare, telecoms, cable, etc.” Several responses questioned whether there was damage to the consumer, often at issue in antitrust. As Shoshanna Zuboff pointed out, in “free” high-tech services, the consumer benefits and resulting satisfaction are highly visible; the costs are not.”

    Nick C commented, “At a price and service level the consumer seems to benefit … What are the downsides for consumers?: no choice in platform content feed from ‘preferred’ sources, personal information, and pattern recognition issues to name a few. So governance and policy settings perhaps need to consider platforms and platform competition from a consumer protection and competitor cultivation perspective.”

    BMJ raises an interesting question: Are their basic differences in the nature of many high-tech businesses that confound potential regulators? In his words, “Antitrust laws typically focus on the impact on the consumer … (they) should consider other constituencies too: e.g., vendors who are stuck operating under the big players’ rules; … innovators, who can’t make their better ‘mouse trap’ available to the world without the resources of the big players; citizens, whose data is being used in ways they can’t fully understand. Our antitrust laws also don’t deal well with … companies that took advantage of network effects to become huge and now are perceived as ‘too big to fail’ or to do anything about.”

    Does antitrust law need a high tech reset? What do you think?


    Original Post


    In 1997, a federal judge blocked the first proposed merger of Office Depot and Staples, ending a marriage that would have reduced the number of big box office supply specialty chains to two, the other being Office Max.

    In seeking to stop the merger, the Federal Trade Commission argued that “office supply superstores constitute a unique market segment” and that other office-supply competitors such as Walmart, Sam’s Warehouse, and Costco were outside the segment. As a result, the merger “would give the (new) company near-monopoly pricing power.”

    The nature of the monopoly? At the time, the company resulting from the merger would have had about $10 billion in sales and a dominant share of the office supply superstore industry—but only a 6 to 8 percent share of the overall office products market. I remember it well. I was the member of Office Depot’s board acting as the liaison to the Staples board on the merger matter. The case cost the two companies slightly more than $20 million to defend. (I didn’t have to recall these details; I Googled them at no cost.) Even then, however, market definition and monopoly pricing power proved to be complicated issues for regulators to address.

    Fast forward to the US Department of Justice’s recent complaint charging that Google has suppressed competition in the search market through its deals with cell phone handset manufacturers, especially Apple, to ensure that Google is the default search app installed on new iphones.

    That may be one reason why a private dinner at a Palo Alto restaurant between Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai in March 2020 attracted so much attention. You’d have to be pretty naïve not to assume that somewhere on their menu was negotiation around Google’s annual payment to Apple for including Google’s search engine into Apple products—a payment estimated to be as much as $12 billion, or 21 percent of Apple’s profits. The larger point is that Google pays Apple large heaps of money to help it preserve its 92 percent share of the global internet search market.

    The government vs. Google case will probably drag out over several years, costing American taxpayers a bundle, but a fraction of what Google can easily afford to spend to defend itself and, if necessary, provide restitution. After all, a recent European Union judgment against Google of more than $9 billion was hardly noticed by the Company’s shareholders.

    Will consumers evidence even less interest in this case than in antitrust cases of the past? Unlike communications companies whose practices generate consumer ire, Google’s services, like many on the internet, are perceived as both “free” (although Shoshanna Zuboff in her recent book argued persuasively that they are not) and a great convenience. It’s the advertisers who pay the freight for Google’s search services.

    Defining markets, identifying consumers, and tracing the impact of high tech intercompany “deals” on competition and resulting costs for consumers may be much more difficult now than even 20 years ago. In an information age in which the “product” is readily shared, can’t be hoarded, and is a result of a network, how will it be feasible for regulators and courts to prohibit business relationships or “break up” business strategies in which one part of the business (advertising) pays for another (search) which, in turn, generates value for advertisers? And if the end result is only a fine, how large does that fine have to be to matter?

    It’s clear that antitrust is not what it used to be, at least not under current laws. Is new legislation required? If so, how likely are the appropriate committees of Congress to come forward with recommended changes? What chance do they have of becoming law?

    Is antitrust just a quaint notion in the internet/Cloud age? What do you think?

    References:

    Kate Duffy, “Google paid Apple up to $12 billion for a search engine deal that disadvantaged competitors, landmark antitrust suit claims,” Business Insider, October 21, 2020, businessinsider.com, accessed October 27, 2020.

    Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (New York: PublicAffairs, 2019).

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    James L. Heskett
    James L. Heskett
    UPS Foundation Professor of Business Logistics, Emeritus
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