Don’t Regulate Internet Platforms, Embrace Them

[Commentary] Internet platforms such as Google, Facebook, and Spotify are creating an awkward quandary for regulators. They have grown rapidly and gained significant market share and yet they have an uncanny habit of creating terrific value for consumers and other players across the economy. With a combined market of 500 million consumers, the European Union should be fertile ground for the kind of market innovation that Internet platforms enable. Rather than knocking them down a peg or two, European regulators should embrace them and ask what they can do to promote technologies that the continent has been comparatively slow to develop.

[Kennedy is a senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation]