3 ms·
We really need to revisit the purely geographic definition of a "market" when it comes to antitrust law in a digital age.
by teacup50 10y ago
We really need to revisit the purely geographic definition of a "market" when it comes to antitrust law in a digital age.
- coldtea 10y agoNo, we really don't. The same things hold true for the non-digital age. If you open a store you can do everything you want in it (within the law of course, can't e.g. refuse to serve blacks), specify how you want it to be run, and sell or not sell whatever you like. Doesn't matter if it serves millions or billions (e.g. McDonalds), as long as there are other vendors with a large aggregated share selling the same goods, you're not a monopoly. Nor does it make sense to. This essentially boils down to: Apple built the iPhone, and they've built iOS SDK, and they've build the App Store, but I, who didn't have anything to do with creating those, want to go there are sell stuff and not be bound by any rules Apple dictates. Sure, one could say "that would be better for the customers", but it's not the customer's store. It's Apples (or Google's, etc). If you want to sell in it, it means you see value in what Apple built (and possible profit for you), but yet you don't want to pay the requested price for this value -- and you feel entitled that you don't have to either.
- teacup50 10y agoNo, we really do. You simply punted on addressing what "multiple vendors" means given platform lock-in, and how that relates to traditional geographic definitions of a market. The geographic model is based on the obvious notion that it's unreasonable to expect people to simply pack up and move to a different city to get access to a different vendor. Given the amount of lock-in inherent in these platforms, it seems pretty clear that people can't simply drop their current platform and switch to another one just to access to a different vendor.