Competition Buzz: Google and the Limits of Antitrust: The Case Against the Antitrust Case Against Google

By: Geoffrey A. Manne & Joshua D. Wright

The antitrust landscape has changed dramatically in the last decade. Within the last two years alone, the United States Department of Justice has held hearings on the appropriate scope of Section 2, issued a comprehensive Report, and then repudiated it; and the European Commission has risen as an aggressive leader in single firm conduct enforcement by bringing abuse of dominance actions and assessing heavy fines against firms including Qualcomm, Intel, and Microsoft.

In the United States, two of the most significant characteristics of the “new” antitrust approach have been a more intense focus on innovative companies in high-tech industries and a weakening of longstanding concerns that erroneous antitrust interventions will hinder economic growth. But this focus is dangerous, and these concerns should not be dismissed so lightly. In this article the authors offer a comprehensive cautionary tale in the context of a detailed factual, legal and economic analysis of the next Microsoft: the theoretical, but perhaps imminent, enforcement action against Google.

Download full paper Here.

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