This week, a new email service, Hey.com, had their app halted (and maybe potentially removed as it had been previously listed by what Apple has called 'an error') because they do not offer the ability to purchase the service through the app. Without paying for the app, the Hey service is useless. Thus, Hey offers …
Are broken promises an antitrust violation?
That is the question that Dina Srinivasan answers in the affirmative in her paper "The Antitrust Case Against Facebook." This is an interesting set of issues because, frankly, my observation is that Facebook, while having a dominant position in social media (which is not an antitrust violation) had not violated antitrust law getting to that position …
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Spotify v. Apple and a mess of claims
A couple of days ago, Spotify announced it was pushing the European Commission to investigate Apple's app store practices. They claimed that Apple was discriminating against them (and presumably other streaming services) on account of their own competing Apple Music service. Spotify claimed they had to pay Apple 30 per cent of their revenue which …
Compulsory licensing is better than blocking acquisitions
There are many people wanting to unroll past tech acquisitions. Others certainly would advocate doing it differently if there was another chance. For instance, Ben Thompson called Facebook being allowed to purchase Instagram "the greatest regulatory failure of the last decade." I don't really see that but that is another matter. The problem, at the …
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Since when is Apple owning the App Store a problem?
I don't mean to be spending time critiquing Elizabeth Warren per se, I kinda like most of her policies but this antitrust stuff is just crazy. Now, in an interview with The Verge, Warren takes aim at breaking up Apple. Yes, Apple. And in a way that it is pretty surprising. She wants to have …
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When breaking up makes no sense
Elizabeth Warren wants to break up Facebook, Amazon and Google. Why? In the 1990s, Microsoft — the tech giant of its time — was trying to parlay its dominance in computer operating systems into dominance in the new area of web browsing. The federal government sued Microsoft for violating anti-monopoly laws and eventually reached a settlement. The government’s antitrust …
It’s time for Identity Portability
I'm at the Brookings Institution today for an event which will, in part, be the launch of my report for The Hamilton Project on "Enhancing Competition with Data and Identity Portability." You can download the report here and here is the tl;dr summary. The Hamilton Project have also released a review of the state of competition in …
Is Amazon really an antitrust worry?
That was the topic of a panel I was involved in at the Chicago Booth Annual Antitrust Conference last week. One thing you get from a Chicago panel is a diverse range of opinions. The panel was motivated by an article in the Yale Law Journal by Lina Khan written when she was a student …
Ted Chiang gets a ton of economics wrong
Amongst economists I know (myself included), Ted Chiang is universally beloved as a science fiction writer. So it was with great excitement that I saw yesterday he had written a Buzzfeed piece on artificial intelligence and the power of corporations. Alas, it turned out to be an incoherent mess that went nowhere. Chiang's thesis is …
Insider Privileges
Prairie Home Companion begins with a mischievous maxim that all children in Lake Wobegon are above average. The equivalent adage in Silicon Valley goes like this: Every insider acts like an outsider. This adage reflects mythology as well as savvy public relations. The largest technology firms possess names recognized in most households, and they perceive …
Digitopoly 