Tag: antitrust
Every business owner knows that a sure way to go out of business is to break promises to customers. Hand a burger and fries to someone who ordered a filet mignon, and you won’t see that customer again. So why do Biden’s antitrust regulators think that it is okay to dismiss America’s laws and become [...]
Regulatory Washington has an appetite for irony, contradiction, and paradox. This is on full display as the Department of Justice (DOJ) seeks to grow online advertising while Congress takes up laws to counteract those efforts. The DOJ has joined several states in filing yet another antitrust case against Google. The new one is about online [...]
I wish I could confidently say that economics and law will drive antitrust in 2023, but I cannot. Tech antitrust cases pursued in the US and Europe in 2021 and 2022 have been poorly conceived and built on weak factual and economic foundations. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) leadership is seeking to turn the agency away [...]
Rumor has it that sponsors of the Open App Markets Act (OAMA) are rushing the legislation through Congress before the end of the current session. I won’t speculate on why the sponsors are in a hurry. But I will challenge their claims that the smartphone and app industries need a regulatory rescue, even if the [...]
Mergers often scare people, especially antitrust experts. Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods in 2017 scared Queens College of the City University of New York Professor Douglas Rushkoff, who said allowing such mergers is a threat “to our markets, our economy, and even our planet.” Former Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Robert Pitofsky was worried that [...]