In some ways, the focus of antitrust action against dominant platforms might turn not on harm to consumers, which could be difficult to prove for “free” services, but on harm to potential competitors, which has not so much been the case in recent years, but arguably was the case 50 years ago when Brandeis approach was more common, focusing on market structure rather than demonstrated consumer harm.
The focus, in other words, could shift to an earlier focus on competitive entry and other forms of market structure, rather than on proving consumers have been harmed. Some skeptics might argue this is a bit like arguing “there has been no crime, but we will charge you with one, anyhow, because you are simply too successful.”
So is the issue dispersing private market power or protecting consumers? Is the problem bigness itself? Even if consumer harm is the standard, it often is difficult to prove. Nor is market share necessarily the result of deliberate efforts to constrain competitors. It is often largely the result of network effects.
So it seems as though the likely assault on dominant platforms will be based on the older market structure concerns, not so much actual consumer harm.
The possibility of antitrust action aimed at promoting competition by restricting dominant platform scale in countries ranging from China to the European Union, United Kingdom and United States is growing.
Efforts to increase user control of their data and complaints about censoring show that a growing wave of concern about monster platform power is not abating, though in practice it is a devilishly complicated matter.
Few would contest the market dominance in search, browsers, cloud computing, operating systems or advertising.
Amazon is the leader in e-commerce with 50 percent of all online sales going through the platform. Amazon also leads cloud computing, with nearly 32 percent market share, as well as live-streaming with Twitch owning 75.6 percent market share.
Some argue Amazon is the market leader in the area of artificial intelligence-based personal digital assistants and smart speakers (Amazon Echo) with 69 percent market share.
Google shares an operating system duopoly with Apple, is the leader in online search (online video sharing (YouTube) and online mapping-based navigation (Google Maps). Google Home has 25 percent of the smart speaker market as well.
Apple shares a duopoly with Google in the field of mobile operating systems and arguably makes the highest profit of any smartphone manufacturer.
Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon dominate U.S. digital advertising. In addition to social networking, Facebook also dominates the functions of online image sharing (Instagram) and online messaging (WhatsApp).
Microsoft continues to dominate in desktop operating system market share (Microsoft Windows) and in office productivity software (Microsoft Office). Microsoft is also the second biggest company in the cloud computing industry (Microsoft Azure), after Amazon, and is also one of the biggest players in the video game industry (Xbox).
Still, the issue is more complicated than often appears. Market leadership by a small number of firms is common in any industry. That is the rationale behind the rule of three.
There always is a tension between competition and investment in the capital-intensive connectivity business, for example. But even in the capital-light software and applications businesses, oligopoly seems to reign.
Still, antitrust action to break up big companies has been a staple of competition remedies for more than a century.
Many have suggested that founding rates for innovative new companies have been depressed for a decade or more because the giants routinely buy them up. So dominant are the leading platforms that their acquisitions of promising new firms creates a kill zone that discourages others from attempting to compete, as this illustration by the Financial Times shows.
Others might note that the ecosystem for translating basic science into commercial products is not as efficient as it needs to be.
How to promote innovation and competition at the same time is an issue more regulators and policymakers are likely to grapple with over the next few years.
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