The Digital Economy

Drawing on her working paper, Giovanna Massarotto discusses three algorithmic approaches to how Google can fairly and efficiently share its data with rivals per the requirements of a court’s mandated remedy for illegally monopolizing the online search market.

States are beginning to impose idiosyncratic rules on artificial intelligence chatbots and other offerings in response to harms to consumers. Rather than create a...

Judge Amit Mehta shaped his remedies in the Google Search case on the assumption that startups developing generative artificial intelligence models can restore competition in internet search. Mihir Kshirsagar analyzes the barriers to entry these startups face—scale, distribution, defaults, data and integration advantages, and content access—to show how Big Tech is still in control of the future of the search industry.

Erik Hovenkamp and A. Douglas Melamed discuss what Judge Amit Mehta got right and wrong in his remedy decision in the Google Search antitrust case.

Eli Orbach examines how the United States’s decentralized education system impedes the diffusion and adoption of generative artificial intelligence in K-12 schools. Slow and uneven diffusion will exacerbate current socioeconomic inequalities, harm students’ future work prospects, and impede macroeconomic growth and productivity.

South Korea’s proposed Online Platform Regulation Act has taken multiple turns amid political upheaval, pressure from the United States, and a fiercely competitive domestic tech market. Hwang Lee explores how global geopolitics, strong domestic platforms, and the "Brussels Effect" are reshaping the country’s approach to digital regulation.

Herbert Hovenkamp reviews Epic Games’ lawsuits against Apple and Google for restraining users’ ability to access Epic’s offerings through third-party app stores. A comparison of the two ecosystems sheds light on what remedies would improve benefits to consumers and how the Department of Justice’s own lawsuit against Apple may fare.

As private corporations gain unprecedented control over public data, Americans are losing access to the information that underpins democracy and critical aspects of their lives. D. Victoria Baranetsky argues that this rise of secrecy—driven by the rising value of data and government privatization—demands not just transparency, but a bold commitment to anti-secrecy as essential to democratic governance.

Judge Amit Mehta will shortly provide his remedy to Google’s monopoly in internet search. Fiona Scott Morton and Paul Heidhues argue that the remedy must include a cap on Google’s payments to the mobile phone manufacturers, carriers, and web browsers that propelled its monopoly. Because any outright ban risks harming Google’s current partners in the short term, Judge Mehta should consider pursuing a flexible ban that instead limits the revenue these partners can receive from Google in order to encourage market entry and competition.

In new research, Sarah Hinck and Jasper van den Boom argue that the European Union’s Digital Markets Act’s (DMA) whistleblower tool does not yet bring enough to the table to effectively incentivize potential informants to report on Big Tech violations.