AOL/Time Warner merger conditions are a template for disastrous tech policy

Kristian Stout —  30 July 2018

Senator Mark Warner has proposed 20 policy prescriptions for bringing “big tech” to heel. The proposals — which run the gamut from policing foreign advertising on social networks to regulating feared competitive harms — provide much interesting material for Congress to consider.

On the positive side, Senator Warner introduces the idea that online platforms may be able to function as least-cost avoiders with respect to certain tortious behavior of their users. He advocates for platforms to implement technology that would help control the spread of content that courts have found violated certain rights of third-parties.

Yet, on other accounts — specifically the imposition of an “interoperability” mandate on platforms — his proposals risk doing more harm than good.

The interoperability mandate was included by Senator Warner in order to “blunt [tech platforms’] ability to leverage their dominance over one market or feature into complementary or adjacent markets or products.” According to Senator Warner, such a measure would enable startups to offset the advantages that arise from network effects on large tech platforms by building their services more easily on the backs of successful incumbents.

Whatever you think of the moats created by network effects, the example of “successful” previous regulation on this issue that Senator Warner relies upon is perplexing:

A prominent template for [imposing interoperability requirements] was in the AOL/Time Warner merger, where the FCC identified instant messaging as the ‘killer app’ – the app so popular and dominant that it would drive consumers to continue to pay for AOL service despite the existence of more innovative and efficient email and internet connectivity services. To address this, the FCC required AOL to make its instant messaging service (AIM, which also included a social graph) interoperable with at least one rival immediately and with two other rivals within 6 months.

But the AOL/Time Warner merger and the FCC’s conditions provide an example that demonstrates the exact opposite of what Senator Warner suggests. The much-feared 2001 megamerger prompted, as the Senator notes, fears that the new company would be able to leverage its dominance in the nascent instant messaging market to extend its influence into adjacent product markets.

Except, by 2003, despite it being unclear that AOL had developed interoperable systems, two large competitors had arisen that did not run interoperable IM networks (Yahoo! and Microsoft). In that same period, AOL’s previously 100% IM market share had declined by about half. By 2009, after eight years of heavy losses, Time Warner shed AOL, and by last year AIM was completely dead.

Not only was it not clear that AOL was able to make AIM interoperable, AIM was never able to catch up once better, rival services launched. What the conditions did do, however, was prevent AOL from launching competitive video chat services as it flailed about in the wake of the deal, thus forcing it to miss out on a market opportunity available to unencumbered competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo!

And all of this of course ignores the practical impossibility entailed in interfering in highly integrated technology platforms.

The AOL/Time Warner merger conditions are no template for successful tech regulation. Congress would be ill-advised to rely upon such templates for crafting policy around tech and innovation.

Kristian Stout

Posts

Kristian Stout is the Associate Director at the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE) and a contributor to TheHill.com. As a technology professional and entrepreneur for over ten years, Kristian’s scholarship is influenced by a practical understanding of the challenges facing innovators in the modern economy. Kristian has previously been a lecturer in the computer science department of Rutgers University, is frequently invited to speak on law and technology topics, and has been published in law journals and legal treatises. Kristian is an attorney licensed to practice law in New Jersey and Pennsylvania; is a partner at A&S Technologies, a software services firm; a member of the NJ State Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights; and sits on the board of the New Jersey Leadership Program, a nonprofit that places southasian youth into political internships in New Jersey.

Trackbacks and Pingbacks:

  1. Senator Warner’s retrogressive proposals could lead to arbitrary and capricious interventions that would harm entrepreneurs and consumers – Courtier en Bourse - August 10, 2018

    […] semaine dernière, je s'est opposée à la sénatrice Warner en se fondant sur les conditions de fusion erronées d'AOL et de Time Warner comme modèle de […]

  2. Senator Warner's retrogressive proposals could lead to arbitrary and capricious interventions that would harm entrepreneurs and consumers | Me Stock Broker - August 10, 2018

    […] week, I objected to Senator Warner relying on the flawed AOL/Time Warner merger conditions as a template for tech regulatory policy, […]

  3. Senator Warner’s retrogressive proposals could lead to arbitrary and capricious interventions that would harm entrepreneurs and consumers « Truth on the Market - August 10, 2018

    […] week, I objected to Senator Warner relying on the flawed AOL/Time Warner merger conditions as a template for tech regulatory policy, […]

  4. AOL/Time Warner merger conditions are a template for disastrous tech policy « Truth on the Market | Me Stock Broker - July 30, 2018

    […] Source link […]