big tech

Alissa Cooper and Zander Arnao argue that a lack of competition in social media has allowed dominant platforms to design algorithms to maximize for...

Utsav Gandhi relates recent developments in the American government’s ban on TikTok and shows how the case maps over broader debates about conflicts between...

Steven C. Salop argues that as part of any remedy outcome from the Google Search case, Google cannot be permitted to enter agreements with...

Some American policymakers have sought to adopt and adapt aspects and principles of the European Union’s Digital Markets Act in an effort to regulate Big Tech giants. In new research, Giovanna Massarotto writes that the principle ideologies driving American and European antitrust, and the broader political economy, renders the DMA and its principles too foreign for American adoption.

Richard R. John recounts how in the twentieth century the once-mighty Bell System, whose descendants include today’s Verizon and AT&T, waged a powerful decades-long public relations campaign, including the funding of history books and research centers, to persuade the public that its success rested in technological imperatives and economic incentives rather than a favorable regulatory landscape. Though the Bell PR campaign failed to stop three highly effective antitrust suits, it succeeded in establishing a story about management, competition, and innovation that many Americans—including several of today’s Big Tech critics—have uncritically repeated.

Steven C. Salop writes that only Google’s full divestiture of its Android operating system can avoid incentives on the part of Android and Google to preference Google’s apps, including its search engine, and stifle competition.

Over the past four years, antitrust scrutiny has increasingly focused on large technology firms. Ginger Zhe Jin and Liad Wagman discuss the complexities of antitrust enforcement and policy in the digital age, highlighting the challenges of promoting innovation while fostering competition, and areas where consumer protection and antitrust are colliding or are set to collide. To that end, the authors identify several key questions that the next administration of the United States should address to better delineate between legal and illegal competitive practices in the digital age, with implications for the broader economy.

Steve Salop explores the basis for warranting strong remedies in the Google Search case and the set of remedies Judge Amit Mehta might consider for restoring competition in the search market by jump-starting the competitive process.

Stacey Dogan writes that antitrust regulators in the United States and Europe are right to investigate Big Tech-AI partnerships. Even if AI markets remain competitive today, history and economics show that the Big Tech companies will push to monopolize segments of the AI market if given the opportunity. The investigations serve as a deterrent against anticompetitive behavior and give the regulators access to the knowledge and information that will be necessary to detect anticompetitive patterns as the AI market matures.

John B. Kirkwood explains six ways in which Big Tech’s alliances with AI startups could harm competition, making clear that the antitrust agencies have good reasonto monitor and investigate them.