Competition in the Digital Age
The New York Times reported recently that Amazon’s buying Goodreads, the largest book review site online. It’s easy to see the appeal of Goodreads to Amazon. Goodreads apparently has 10 million ratings and reviews of over 700,000 titles. This trove will bolster the already-copious product information that supports book discovery at Amazon.com. Moreover, Goodreads is a …
Continue reading "Am I the Only One Ambivalent about Amazon’s Acquisition of Goodreads?"
Here is a definition of "sequester" that isn't the real definition but what we now talk about. A sequester is a situation where a party (or parties) agree to a horribly painful and costly course of action to themselves in the event that they do not take a certain action. For the US Congress, the …
The FTC and Google settled their differences last week, putting the final touches on an agreement. Commentators began carping from all sides as soon as the announcement came. The most biting criticisms have accused the FTC of going too easy on Google. Frankly, I think the commentators are only half right. Yes, it appears as …
Continue reading "The FTC and Google: What did Larry Learn?"
The European Commission has reached a settlement with most major publishers and Apple over eBooks. The upshot of it is that existing agency contracts with Apple will be removed and new ones written in their place. However, the new ones will not have in them the "Most Favoured Nation" (MFNs) clauses that prevented eBook retailers …
Craigslist dominates the classifieds market in the US. But as everyone who has ever used it knows, it is primitive. It reflects an older Internet era that is pre-search and pre-nice interface design. But it is a platform for businesses to post ads and for consumers to search listings. Recently, Craigslist has moved to block …
The big IP news this week was the verdict in the Apple-Samsung trial. The jury found (mostly) in favour of Apple in its claims that Samsung had copied patented technology. There were many patents that were under consideration but the ones that appear to have been most significant were the ones that related to the …
There has been much focus on the retail prices of eBooks following the DOJ's investigation into publishers and Apple. Countering that has been an undercurrent of discontent regarding Amazon's monopoly power as a distributor. While it is legitimate to worry about such things, it was a complicated and dynamic situation and so it was tough …
So it started with JK Rowling who went platform independent and effectively DRM free on the Harry Potter series. This meant that for those books purchasers would not be locked into any one platform (e.g., Kindle) and that also meant that no platform could use lock-in to build up market power. Interestingly, you can't buy …
The DOJ took Apple and a set of publishers to Court today on price fixing charges in relation to an alleged conspiracy. Now if you read the DOJ's claim it looks bad but, having read some of these before, let me tell you that they always look bad. We really have to wait until a …
Continue reading "What if the eBook 'conspiracy' hadn't happened?"
Privacy has just recently entered antitrust discussions. The debate has focused on whether concerns about privacy should be used as a criterion to regulate large firms that look like monopolies. The question which US Senator Al Franken raises is whether a reduction in consumer harm due to privacy erosion should be treated in a similar …
Digitopoly 