Developing policy at Facebook?

If we regulate to protect privacy, do we risk competition? If we regulate to strengthen competition, do we risk innovation? If we regulate to exclude harmful content, do we risk free speech? Over-simplified perhaps, but these are in essence some of the hard questions in tech policy right now, and …

Doing Digital in India?

Across developing countries, connectivity through internet access and use, particularly on mobile devices, has vastly improved over the last decade. In large part this is due to the efforts of Big Tech and their strategies of reaching “the next billion users”.  As welcome as such efforts may be, th…

Being DG Comp's Chief Economist?

There wouldn’t be too many more prized, and pressured, jobs than as Chief Economist at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition, and particularly in recent years when DG Comp has been at the vanguard of developments in antitrust enforcement against Big Tech. Professor Tommaso …

Too much attention?

Much of the antitrust discourse nowadays is about personal data and the implications of concentrated digital markets for our privacy.  But, in focussing on data, have we been missing the wood for the trees?  Are we in fact trading our scarce and precious attention for many of the supposedly free se…

Downunder's Dive into Digital Platforms

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has completed its ground-breaking inquiry into digital platforms. What distinguishes this inquiry from many others is its broad holistic approach to competition, consumer, unfair trading, privacy and public interest issues.  It has a focus on the m…

Law unto themselves?

The pervasiveness of platforms in our societies is hard to ignore.  It has wide ranging effects on and implications for our economic, social and cultural practices and lives. Some focus on the dominance of digital platforms as a failing of antitrust and call for an entire overhaul of the intellectu…

Solutions from Stigler?

The George Stigler Centre at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business has been undertaking a wide ranging study of digital platforms. One aspect of the study has a focus on market structures in digital platform markets and the antitrust implications. Other aspects explore privacy and data…

More on digital mergers?

Between them GAFA have made more than 400 acquisitions over just the last 10 years. With the benefit of hindsight, many of these acquisitions have been portrayed as strategic or killer acquisitions, designed to snuff out potential or emergent competitive threats. Recognising this, there is a growi…

Big Tech politics?

If you spend any time reading the US press you will have realised that there’s recently been a potentially dramatic series of developments when it comes to Big Tech antitrust.  Investigations, congressional hearings and even break ups are all on the menu. In this episode our guest is Matt Stoller,…

Blockchain antitrust – old wine in new bottles?

Blockchain is a technology that both bedazzles and bewilders!  For its hard core advocates, it is seen as the answer to the problem of concentrated power on the internet.  For others, its workings are as impenetrable as its implications. In this episode we are joined by Dr Thibault Schrepel, Assis…