Law Commons^™

Tech Giant Exclusion, John B. Kirkwood

Faculty Articles

There is no topic in regulatory policy that is more pressing and more controversial than what to do about the tech giants – Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple. Critics claim that that these powerful platforms crush competitors, distort the political process, and elude antitrust law because it cares only about consumer prices. The only solution, they argue, is to break them up.

This diagnosis is mistaken. The tech giants have indeed engaged in anticompetitive conduct. They have excluded rivals selling products on their platforms by demoting them in search results, copying their products, or refusing to deal with them. While …