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The author points out that tech companies filed amicus briefs on behalf of the credit card industry.

gowld 9y ago
No, they didn't. The NYT tried to insinuate that while concealing the relevant details. http://www.ccianet.org/2018/01/ccia-files-supreme-court-amicus-brief-in-american-express-case/ http://www.ccianet.org/2018/01/ccia-files-supreme-court-amic... Washington — The Computer & Communications Industry Association has filed an amicus brief on how the Supreme Court should look at multi-sided business models from an antitrust perspective when it hears the upcoming Ohio v. American Express case. While CCIA does not weigh in on the substance of the financial services issues impacting merchant fees, the tech trade association does argue that constraints on all sides of a multi-sided firms should be considered when analyzing if a plaintiff has made out a prima facie case of anticompetitive conduct. The American Express case represents the first time that an antitrust dispute involving “multi-sided markets” — where a third party service provider is in the business of uniting buyers with sellers — has come before the Supreme Court of the United States. ... “Two-sided markets” or “multi-sided firms” is a term of art in the theoretical economics literature that refers to business models that have multiple sets of customers, such as many of CCIA’s members. Multi-sided businesses operate under complex economic dynamics as they must consider the effects of their pricing and output decisions on both sets of customers, as well as the interrelationship among the customers on each side of their business. Whether a multi-sided firm has market power or not requires consideration of the actual effects of multi-sidedness. Ignoring these competitive realities would risk penalizing healthy competition to the detriment of consumers.
- hedora 9y ago
  How do railways (freight, passengers) or telcos not meet the definition of “multi-sided firm”? Those are the first two monopoly cases that came to mind. Can you name any anti-trust suit ever brought against a firm with one set of customers? (And zero suppliers/employees, if you take the argument being made to its logical extreme) I’m not buying the “this time it’s different” argument at all.
- fourthark 9y ago
  That looks like an amicus brief in support of the "two-sided" argument. What am I missing here?

No, they didn't. The NYT tried to insinuate that while concealing the relevant details. http://www.ccianet.org/2018/01/ccia-files-supreme-court-amicus-brief-in-american-express-case/ http://www.ccianet.org/2018/01/ccia-files-supreme-court-amic... Washington — The Computer & Communications Industry Association has filed an amicus brief on how the Supreme Court should look at multi-sided business models from an antitrust perspective when it hears the upcoming Ohio v. American Express case. While CCIA does not weigh in on the substance of the financial services issues impacting merchant fees, the tech trade association does argue that constraints on all sides of a multi-sided firms should be considered when analyzing if a plaintiff has made out a prima facie case of anticompetitive conduct. The American Express case represents the first time that an antitrust dispute involving “multi-sided markets” — where a third party service provider is in the business of uniting buyers with sellers — has come before the Supreme Court of the United States. ... “Two-sided markets” or “multi-sided firms” is a term of art in the theoretical economics literature that refers to business models that have multiple sets of customers, such as many of CCIA’s members. Multi-sided businesses operate under complex economic dynamics as they must consider the effects of their pricing and output decisions on both sets of customers, as well as the interrelationship among the customers on each side of their business. Whether a multi-sided firm has market power or not requires consideration of the actual effects of multi-sidedness. Ignoring these competitive realities would risk penalizing healthy competition to the detriment of consumers.

hedora 9y ago
How do railways (freight, passengers) or telcos not meet the definition of “multi-sided firm”? Those are the first two monopoly cases that came to mind. Can you name any anti-trust suit ever brought against a firm with one set of customers? (And zero suppliers/employees, if you take the argument being made to its logical extreme) I’m not buying the “this time it’s different” argument at all.
fourthark 9y ago
That looks like an amicus brief in support of the "two-sided" argument. What am I missing here?