A handful of digital platforms have come to dominate search, advertising, and online ecosystems, causing regulators to initiate competition and antitrust enforcement in those sectors.
But regulators around the world face a pressing question: Is competition law still capable of obtaining competition in digital markets?
In this article, “Are competition authorities equipped to combat entrenched digital monopolies? -Lessons from the US and EU antitrust cases against Google,” published in the University of Illinois Journal of Law, Technology, and Policy, CRA’s Fiona M. Scott Morton, with Jasper van den Boom, examine whether competition authorities in the United States and European Union are capable of tackling entrenched digital monopolies.
Below are a few key takeaways from their analysis:
- Digital monopolies are hard to regulate because of strong structural advantages.
- The EU excels at identifying problems but struggles to enforce changes due to legal and procedural limits on remedies.
- The US has stronger tools to restore competition but must be willing to use them.
The authors conclude that effective remedies, not just findings of wrongdoing, are critical to restoring real competition in digital markets. They argue that legal reform in the EU is necessary for success. The separate approaches of the EU and US are naturally complementary and could achieve success together, but both jurisdictions would need the political will to use their full authority in implementing effective measures.
