Governments and regulatory bodies have begun increasing their efforts to curb the threats to market competition in the digital age. Conglomerates such as Meta and Alphabet have such a vast impact on global markets. This raises an important question: Can existing antitrust law keep up with the leviathans that these companies have become?
In the US Department of Justice’s trial against Google in August, it was held that Google holds an illegal monopoly on online search engines. It found evidence that Google has paid to ensure it is the default search engine worldwide. Sources suggest that Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has paid up to $10bn a year to secure its solitary hold on the market. This is by no means the only tussle Alphabet has had with antitrust challenges- it has lost cases against companies such as Epic Games for wilfully acquiring monopoly in app stores, and been charged by the European Commission for also violating EU antitrust laws.
As technology grows and evolves, regulatory systems for competition in markets simply cannot catch up. For example, the amount of ad tech companies under Google means that its dominance on the internet is deeply entrenched and complex. Nearly every website, even if independently run, is caught up in the monopoly one way or the other. The search engine is also tied to the popular Android smartphone operating system, making Google even less avoidable. The argument has been made for new regulatory bodies and systems to be created solely for the purpose of regulating digital markets and the internet, but thus far this seems to be an idealistic ask.
Meta is yet another example. The European Commission has fined Meta nearly 800 million euro for tying its massive advertisement service to Facebook Marketplace- its own digital buying and selling platform. Meta not only owns Facebook, but Instagram and WhatsApp, therefore hosting a massive portion of online activity billions of users conduct every day. Social media shapes communication in our times, which means that Meta holds a monopoly on communication. This can dictate trends in the global market and economy.
Efforts have been made to mitigate the seemingly endless influence of the biggest tech conglomerates on market competition. The European Commission has established “gatekeepers”. Those are the online platforms that have the strongest global market positions via the Digital Markets Act. The European Commission has set out regulations and sanctions for their practises on data policy and providing consumers freedom of choice. The US Department of Justice has suggested breaking up Google so that its various companies and systems are no longer interdependent for users. However, these measures do not address the issue effectively enough. The digital conglomerate landscape continues to develop, with companies such as OpenAI arriving onto the marketplace with technology that presents threats to competition law that lawmakers could not have foreseen. It seems that for every step regulations take, big tech takes several more.
References and Further Reading:
MacCarthy: Google’s antitrust troubles demonstrate the need for a digital regulator (Brookings)
European Commission: The Digital Markets Act- Ensuring fair and open digital markets
Yousif and Fleury: Google’s online search monopoly is illegal, US judge rules (BBC)
Gerken: Meta fined €798m over 'unfair' Facebook Marketplace (BBC)
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