The European Commission has announced a formal investigation into Broadcom, a US chipmaker, regarding alleged abuse of a dominant position in the markets for modem and television chipsets. In doing so, the European Commission has indicated that it intends to impose interim measures to restrain any exclusionary practices the chipmaker may be engaging in. This…
The US Department of Justice has announced that it will be reviewing the practices employed by market-leading online platforms in terms of whether they create or maintain structural impediments to competition in the market. The announcement follows the launch of similar antitrust investigations by regulators around the world, targeting online platform giants such as Google…
The European Commission has cleared CK Hutchison’s takeover of Italian telecoms group, Wind Tre, subject to CK Huthcison agreeing to take full responsibility for the conditions imposed on Wind Tre when it was created. These conditions relate to the completion of spectrum transfer and site divestment, and to the implementation of the national roaming agreement…
It has been reported today that the UK Government sees free-to-use digital services as raising antitrust issues. In a response to a House of Lords Select Committee on Communications inquiry, UK advertising in a digital age, the Government indicates that “digital services – particularly those that are free-to-use and funded by advertising – pose challenges…
Diane Coyle has published a fascinating paper on potential reform to competition policy to address issues caused by digital platforms. The paper is available here an interesting read. Issues addressed in the paper include: Difficulties defining a multi-sided platform. Undue focus upon short-term pricing elements in competition assessments. The impact of dominance in the digital…
On Monday the Preiskel and CEG teams were delighted to host a seminar discussing various concerns and potential changes regarding competition and regulatory policy. The first panel focused on regulation and oligopoly in telecoms markets. Debate included whether oligopoly led ipso facto to bad consumer outcomes or whether there is scope for oligopoly to lead…
It has been reported that Google has had to issue refunds to a number of advertisers, after the advertisements they placed with the company were run on website with invalid traffic. In the online advertising market, the advertiser pays more the more traffic the website its advertisement is placed on generates. The advertisements in question were…
ICOMP has called for the publication of Google’s remedy proposals to the European Commission, along with the Commission’s Decision in the Google Shopping investigation. The Commission announced its finding on 27 June 2017, outlining that it had found Google to have abused its dominance with regards to its Google Shopping product. As well as being…
In discussing how Android users in Russia are now being asked what default search engine they would like in Chrome Mobile, a remedy agreed between Google and Russia’s FAS following an antitrust probe in the country, Politico quoted Tim Cowen‘s blog post on Google remedies: “It may be that the FAS points the way both…
Preiskel & Co Partner Tim Cowen shares some thoughts on Senator Orrin Hatch’s recent comments on antitrust policy in the first of our blog series on “Hipster Antitrust”. Predictable criticisms of the Better Deal in the USA arose in a speech from Senator Orrin Hatch (Republican). To be fair to Senator Hatch, these criticisms…
