{"id":14271,"date":"2016-04-26T13:29:25","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T17:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=14271"},"modified":"2021-06-18T07:08:08","modified_gmt":"2021-06-18T11:08:08","slug":"antitrust-and-aggregation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/26\/antitrust-and-aggregation\/","title":{"rendered":"Antitrust and Aggregation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/stratechery.com\/2016\/antitrust-and-aggregation\/\">Ben Thompson<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/stratechery.com\/2016\/antitrust-and-aggregation\/\">\n<p>The Play Store is the one part of the Google Mobile Services suite that is irreplaceable and thus the leverage enforcing the various requirements the [European] Commission objected to, like making Google Search and Chrome defaults, and forbidding AOSP forks.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>This monopoly, though, is a lot different than the monopolies of yesteryear: aggregators aren&rsquo;t limiting consumer choice by controlling supply (like oil) or distribution (like railroads) or infrastructure (like telephone wires); rather, consumers are self-selecting onto the Aggregator&rsquo;s platform because it&rsquo;s a better experience. This has completely neutered U.S. antitrust law, which is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/atr\/file\/800691\/download\">based on<\/a> whether or not there has been clear harm to the consumer (primarily through higher prices, but also decreased competition), and it&rsquo;s why the <a href=\"https:\/\/stratechery.com\/2015\/daily-update-google-intel-tag-heuer-announce-partnership-ftc-staff-recommended-suing-google-antitrust-violations\/\">FTC has declined to sue Google<\/a> for questionable search practices.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>One more implication of aggregation-based monopolies is that once competitors die the aggregators become monopsonies &mdash; i.e. the only buyer for modularized suppliers. And this, by extension, turns the virtuous cycle on its head: instead of more consumers leading to more suppliers, a dominant hold over suppliers means that consumers can never leave, rendering a superior user experience less important than a monopoly that looks an awful lot like the ones our antitrust laws were designed to eliminate.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ben Thompson: The Play Store is the one part of the Google Mobile Services suite that is irreplaceable and thus the leverage enforcing the various requirements the [European] Commission objected to, like making Google Search and Chrome defaults, and forbidding AOSP forks. [&#8230;] This monopoly, though, is a lot different than the monopolies of yesteryear: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2021-06-18T11:08:11Z","apple_news_api_id":"9de3032f-dcba-4fe3-9693-cad0e130a3da","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2021-06-18T11:08:11Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AneMDL9y6T-OWk8rQ4TCj2g","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[19,248,2085,101,25,1156,784,295,209,37,174,219],"class_list":["post-14271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-amazon","tag-android","tag-antitrust","tag-business","tag-facebook","tag-federal-trade-commission-ftc","tag-google-play-store","tag-history","tag-legal","tag-microsoft","tag-storage","tag-windows"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14272,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14271\/revisions\/14272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}