Search Engine Competition with Network Externalities

Abstract

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Conflicts of interest and incentives to bias: A microeconomic critique of Google’s tangled position on the Web

“…For both media scholars and regulators, microeconomics can extend analyses of concrete configurations of power and identify control points, structural dynamics and crucial resources for argumentation. While we doubt that their proposal would suffice, Argenton and Prüfer's (2011) suggestion that search companies should be required to share query log data with their competitors is an example of an original policy proposition that is directly derived from microeconomic analysis.…”

How to Measure Privacy-Related Consumer Harm in Merger Analysis? A Critical Reassessment of the EU Commissionns Merger Control in Data-Driven Markets

“…16 They highlight that multisided online platforms also benefit from datadriven direct and indirect network effects. 17 The access to personal data might also entail important learning effects, 18 which allow online platforms to provide better products to their users 19 and offer better targeted advertising services to advertising customers. Personal data is, thus, capable of generating positive (cross-platform) feedback loops, 20 for it enables online platforms to increase their attractiveness towards users, which in turn also allows them to attract more paying advertising customers.…”

“…The concentration of large amounts of personal data might therefore entail important entry barriers 24 and constitute a source of market power allowing the incumbent firm to tip the market in its favour. 25 While the antitrust literature still reflects a fundamental disagreement about whether the concentration and accumulation of personal data should be taken into account as a source of entry barriers and market power in competition analysis, competition authorities on both sides of the Atlantic have already been assessing the competitive role of personal data in merger analysis for quite some time.…”

Governance of algorithms: options and limitations

“…Some proposals for regulatory action in the search-engine market suggest increasing transparency and controllability by public authorities, while others aim at cutting the barriers to market entry (Schulz et al, 2005) or establishing the principle of neutral search (Lao, 2013). A publicly funded "index of the web" (Lewandowski, 2014) or user data sets (Argenton and Prüfer, 2012) are suggested as common resources to enhance market contestability, facilitate market entry and promote competition.…”