Showing archive for: “International Antitrust”
Move Slow and Collude: The Antitrust Problem With Pacing AI
The frontier AI race’s latest safety proposal would have the leading contenders agree on how fast to run. Antitrust law has a less flattering name for that arrangement: a cartel. That is the central problem with the “pacing the frontier” plan that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei unveiled last weekend, and that fellow AI executives Sam ... Move Slow and Collude: The Antitrust Problem With Pacing AI
Rate Expectations: Apple and the New Price Regulators
Competition policy is supposed to protect the competitive process, not do double-duty as price regulation. Yet the line between the two appears to be blurring in both a U.S. antitrust case and the European Union’s enforcement of the Digital Markets Act (DMA). On Aug. 14, after years of litigation with Epic Games, Apple submitted a ... Rate Expectations: Apple and the New Price Regulators
Premium, Regular, or Collusive? Brazil’s Aprix Case Tests Algorithmic Pricing
Few antitrust investigations find their theory of harm laid out in the target’s sales brochure. Brazil’s investigation of Aprix, a startup that sells pricing software to gas stations, nearly managed the feat. One of the company’s promotional brochures introduced prospective clients to the prisoner’s dilemma, the classic game-theory example in which individually rational choices can ... Premium, Regular, or Collusive? Brazil’s Aprix Case Tests Algorithmic Pricing
Europe Wants Tech Champions, Then Makes Them Share the Trophy
Europe wants its own technology champions. It just seems less comfortable with what champions look like once they arrive. The European Commission’s latest Digital Markets Act (DMA) decisions capture that tension. Europe wants more innovation, investment, and globally competitive digital platforms. Yet when a company assembles the data, technology, distribution, and complementary services needed to ... Europe Wants Tech Champions, Then Makes Them Share the Trophy
The Missing Rival: China and the Limits of AI Antitrust
The standard AI competition story has plenty of supposed villains. It just keeps leaving out one of the biggest. Regulators and academics warn that a small group of firms—including Amazon, Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI, with Microsoft and Meta sometimes added—will dominate generative artificial intelligence. Their advantages in computing power, capital, data, and distribution will harden ... The Missing Rival: China and the Limits of AI Antitrust
Android and the Art of Regulatory Self-Harm
Europe keeps asking where its technology champions are. In Google Android, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) offered part of the answer: build a successful platform, and Brussels may spend the next decade treating its architecture as evidence. The CJEU’s final judgment in Google Android, handed down last week, will be celebrated ... Android and the Art of Regulatory Self-Harm
The DMA’s Cloud-Cuckoo Land
The Digital Markets Act (DMA) was built to police digital gatekeepers. The European Commission now wants to test how far that metaphor can stretch—past app stores, social networks, and marketplaces, and into the server racks. The Commission has reached the preliminary view that Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure should be designated as gatekeepers ... The DMA’s Cloud-Cuckoo Land
Killer Theories and Acqui-Hire Alibis
Antitrust agencies have a habit of giving new labels to old anxieties. In artificial intelligence, the latest worry is that partnerships between large technology firms and startups are not partnerships at all, but mergers in clever disguises. In the first article in this series, we examined how Brazil’s Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) has ... Killer Theories and Acqui-Hire Alibis
Brazil Catches the Acqui-Hire Wave
The global antitrust wave over Big Tech’s artificial intelligence deals has reached Brazil. The question is whether Brazil’s competition authority is paddling into a real breaker—or mistaking regulatory chop for a swell. Last month, Brazil’s antitrust authority, the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE), entered that debate. It issued part of its long-awaited decisions on ... Brazil Catches the Acqui-Hire Wave
Act First, Learn Later: AI Antitrust and the Error Costs of Regulation at Machine Speed
Competition enforcers appear to have discovered their own version of artificial intelligence: act first, learn later. In the span of a week, agencies across four continents moved to reshape how AI products are built, distributed, and integrated—mostly before anyone has shown, in a final appealable decision, that the challenged conduct harms competition. Last week, a ... Act First, Learn Later: AI Antitrust and the Error Costs of Regulation at Machine Speed
Brazil, Bots, and the Price of Free
Brazil’s WhatsApp case began as a fight over access to an application programming interface, or API—the technical doorway that lets outside services connect to WhatsApp. It has quickly become a test of how antitrust law should treat AI distribution. The Federal Court of São Paulo has now suspended the R$250,000, or about $50,000, daily fine ... Brazil, Bots, and the Price of Free
The Bundle of All Fears: India’s Risky War on Integration
Good intentions make for lousy competition law when they are stapled to bad economics. That is the trouble with the new fashion in digital regulation: It treats integration as suspicion, product design as coercion, and innovation as something firms may pursue only after regulators decide it is sufficiently tidy. The European Union’s Digital Markets Act ... The Bundle of All Fears: India’s Risky War on Integration
