Ownership

Over the past four or five years, scholars, politicians, and public advocates have begun to push a new idea of what antitrust policy should be, arguing that we need to move away from a narrow focus on consumer welfare—which in practice has usually meant a focus on prices—toward consideration of a much wider range of possible harms from companies’ exercise of market power: damage to suppliers, workers, competitors, customer choice, and even the political system as a whole.

A district court in DC dismissed the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust complaint against Facebook, saying the agency had failed to offer enough facts to prove Facebook has monopoly power in the social media industry. The court said the FTC could file an amended complaint with more details to bolster its case, but the judge voiced outright skepticism that Facebook is a monopoly. “It is almost as if the agency expects the Court to simply nod to the conventional wisdom that Facebook is a monopolist,” District Judge James E.

The House Judiciary Committee approved far-reaching legislation to curb the market dominance of tech giants, including Google and Facebook, but much of the effort faced intensive lobbying by affected firms that slowed the committee’s work and foreshadowed a pitched battle in the Senate. The centerpiece of the six-bill package, a measure to bar big tech companies from favoring their own products in a range of circumstances on their platforms, was ap

Google and Amazon defended their smart-speaker businesses as US senators warned the grip the companies have over the market could harm competition and consumer privacy. Both Republicans and Democrats at a June 15 hearing raised concerns about what they said were anticompetitive practices, such as selling devices below cost and promoting companies' own services over those of competitors on their platforms. Representatives from Google and Amazon argued that they prevent this by offering an optional range of rival voice-assistant services on their own devices.

AT&T is looking to give cable companies a run for their money after years of lax competition, with CFO Pascal Desroches expressing confidence in its ability to steal share. The company is currently aiming to double its fiber footprint to 30 million customer locations by the end of 2025; Desroches reiterated that AT&T will primarily focus on filling in coverage within and adjacent to its existing footprint.

The Senate confirmed Lina Khan to the Federal Trade Commission, elevating one of the tech industry’s most prominent antitrust critics to the government’s top Silicon Valley watchdog. The vote was 69-28 in a Senate split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, signaling the growing bipartisan interest in reining in large tech companies’ power. It came just days after House lawmakers from both parties unveiled bills that could force Silicon Valley companies to change their business practices and in the most severe cases, break up the companies.

House lawmakers proposed a raft of bipartisan legislation aimed at reining in the country’s biggest tech companies, including a bill that seeks to make Amazon and other large corporations effectively split in two or shed their private-label products.

The Ohio Attorney General asked an Ohio state court to declare Google a common carrier and/or public utility under the laws of Ohio and Ohio common law. The complaint is novel -- and not obviously stupid. But it has some real obstacles to overcome.  As Feld has written at length before, the history of common carrier regulation goes back 500 years in the common law.

Ohio’s attorney general filed a lawsuit asking a judge to rule that Google is a public utility. Ohio said that it is the first state in the country to bring a lawsuit seeking a court declaration that Google is a common carrier subject under state law to government regulation.

Here's what the Federal Communications Commission will consider at its June 2021 open meeting.