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The Colorado, et al. Google antitrust suit touches on so many things @laweconcenter has been working on over the past decade-ish, it’s hard to know where to start. Fortunately, that means we’ve already got a lot of work addressing its claims. A few suggestions: 1/11
The three underlying tenets of Colorado’s and Texas’s and the DOJ’s cases against Google — not to mention the HJC Report — are essentially the following... 2/11
1. Platforms shld be treated as essential facilities w/ a legal duty to deal w/ competitors;
2. Platforms don't innovate, only small new entrants do;
3. Courts/regulators can impose remedies that solve these problems w/o creating greater harms.
All of these ideas are wrong. 3/11
2. Platforms don't innovate, only small new entrants do;
3. Courts/regulators can impose remedies that solve these problems w/o creating greater harms.
All of these ideas are wrong. 3/11
1st, my @Concurrences essay earlier this year, "Against the Vertical Discrimination Presumption". Contrary to claims, vertical integration, self-preferencing, & platform appropriation of edge innovations are usually pro-competitive & benefit users. 4/11 https://laweconcenter.org/resource/against-the-vertical-discrimination-presumption/
2nd, "If Search Neutrality Is the Answer, What’s the Question?" @ProfWrightGMU and I demonstrate that search engine design is a crucial part of competition, and expecting “search neutrality” is about as sensible as expecting grocery store neutrality. 5/11 https://laweconcenter.org/resource/search-neutrality-question/
3rd, the cos complaining about Google’s lack of “neutrality” tend to be the also-rans. In the EU Foundem led the charge, blaming Google Shopping for its own competitive deficiencies. Users just weren’t that into it. "The Real Reason Foundem Foundered" 6/11 https://laweconcenter.org/resource/the-real-reason-foundem-foundered/
4th, Yelp is another frequent Google critic. It probably *is* bad for Yelp that Google local results are embedded in Search results. But we shouldn’t care about competitors, we should care about users.... 7/11
Despite what some ( @superwuster) assert the evidence shows that users clearly *benefit* from such non-neutrality. See "A Critical Assessment of the Latest Charge of Google’s Anticompetitive Bias from Yelp & Tim Wu" by @kristianstout & @RBenSperry & me 8/11 https://laweconcenter.org/resource/critical-assesment-yelp-wu
5th There’s so much more to it than these, but for an overview of what’s at stake here, legally and economically, my paper on "Google and the Limits of Antitrust" with @ProfWrightGMU might be a good primer. 9/11 https://laweconcenter.org/resource/google-and-the-limits-of-antitrust/
6th, If you need a primer on the (horrendously complex) digital advertising market that the Texas lawsuit focuses on, I wrote this with @ericfruits and @s8mb. We’ll have more on this soon. 10/11 https://laweconcenter.org/resource/the-antitrust-case-against-googles-adtech-business-explained/
Finally, we’re running an ongoing series w/ guest & ICLE commentary on @TOTMblog for the duration of these cases. It will be a one-stop-shop for analysis from a wide range of viewpoints. 1st few posts are already up — check it out. 11/11 https://truthonthemarket.com/symposia/symposium-on-the-future-of-american-antitrust-the-united-states-v-google/
