A blog about competition, regulation and privacy in the digital era
It was reported last week that the US Federal Trade Commission has started investigating Amazon’s $1.7 billion acquisition of iRobot, the maker of Roomba smart vacuum cleaners. It seems to us that the UK and EU authorities will also have jurisdiction to investigate. Why should anyone (apart from iRobot’s shareholders) care about a large retailer … Continue reading Amazon/iRobot: The flywheel spins once more
Music streaming is a fascinating industry, and many people were looking forward to seeing how the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) had used its wide-reaching information gathering powers to uncover any problems. This is a huge and culturally-important industry for the UK, and it seems to operate in some weird and convoluted ways. There … Continue reading CMA music streaming market study: what’s going on?
As readers of this blog know, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) blocked its first Big Tech merger in the Meta/Giphy case. Meta duly appealed to the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (“CAT”) and the CAT’s judgment was issued last week. The most discussed element of the case has been the CMA’s controversial theories of … Continue reading Meta/Giphy court judgment: The CMA’s controversial merger analysis survives, but its procedures don’t
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) has published its report into mobile ecosystems a few days before its statutory deadline. This market study has focused on mobile browsers, mobile operating systems and app stores. Following the UK Government’s disappointing decision to delay the necessary legislation that will give the Digital Markets Unit (“DMU”) its … Continue reading The CMA takes matters into its own hands with browsers and cloud gaming market investigation references
In the UK’s slow journey towards its Digital Markets Unit (“DMU”) regime, the Government has published its formal response to last summer’s consultation document (the “Response Document”). We now know that the necessary legislation will not be included in the next session of Parliament, and therefore will not be enacted within the next year, but … Continue reading The UK’s Digital Markets Unit: we’re not making any progress, but we promise we will “in due course”
The UK Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) investigation into the acquisition of Giphy by Facebook (now Meta) has been watched by merger control practitioners with morbid fascination. It has included everything one could wish for in a merger case – a Big Tech killer acquisition (arguably), novel theories of harm (arguably), satellite litigation, the highest … Continue reading CMA blocks the Facebook/Giphy merger: you can’t say they didn’t warn us
Today’s blog post is an interview with our friend Philip Pilcher, Director of Policy and Regulatory Affairs at Bauer Media Audio. Philip has some interesting insights into the future of radio at a time when listening habits are changing and the digital platforms are playing an increasingly central role. He will describe in particular how … Continue reading Harnessing digital disruption in the radio industry – an interview with Bauer Media Audio
The British Government’s consultation on the design of the new regulatory regime for Big Tech (the “Consultation”) closed on Friday. We gave our initial thoughts on this legislation back in July. This blog post picks out some of the other important issues. For the most part, the Government has followed the advice of the CMA’s … Continue reading The UK’s regulatory regime for Big Tech: will the Government dare to make it more effective?
The UK government has published its White Paper on the new regulatory regime for firms with Strategic Market Status (SMS), which is very likely to capture firms such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. The new legislation is therefore now officially government policy. At first glance, it will be a sigh of relief for the … Continue reading UK Digital Regulation: time to get into the detail
The former Chair of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Lord Andrew Tyrie, has written a report setting out some suggestions to reform the competition regime. This follows an FT opinion piece earlier this year, and his much-discussed letter to the Secretary of State in February 2019 advocating reforms to the competition regime. Lord Tyrie’s … Continue reading The UK reform agenda